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6000522S6Q 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 



PRINTBO BY MURRAY AND GIBB, 
FOR 

W. OLIPHANT & CO., EDINBURGH. 

London, Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 

Dublin, M'Glashan and Gill. 

Glasgow, David Robertson. 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY. 



JAMES DODDS, 

'HMS' STRUGGLE OF TI<(fca»TTISH CBTBM4PTW. ' 




EDINBURGH : 
WILLIAM OLIPHANT AND CO. 



2.10- 



J^-i'. 



4 



* 




PREFACE. 



*.' 



>t 




ARIOUS motives, which need not be 
explained, led me some time ago to 
project a series of sketches, or studies 
(to adopt the convenient French term), of some 
of the leading men in the Nineteenth century 
— the men who have accomplished the facts or 
influenced the opinions of the age. The inten- 
tion would be to excite an interest amongst the 
young especially, in the public men and the 
public events of what may be called their own 
times. The profusion of Memoirs which have 
lately been published of the men of the pre- 
sent century — too long and minute for general 
readers, but invaluable to the historian, the 



vi PREFACE. 



essayist, or the critic — would afford the most 
ample materials for such an attempt at recent 
biography. 

Certain circumstances of the moment have 
suggested to begin with the following sketch of 
Thomas Chalmers. The questions to which 
he devoted his life — the cure of pauperism, the 
reclamation of the city masses, the general 
amelioration of the working class, the effective 
organization of Churches if they are to be dis- 
severed from connection with the State, — have 
of late assumed a position of new and critical 
importance; and it is well to give a renewed 
outline of the views and experiences of a man 
so benevolent, active, and fertile in plans, and 
also to indicate the sources where more com- 
plete information can be obtained. 

I need not say how much the present Study 
is indebted to the narrative and documents in 



PREFACE. vii 



the Memoirs by Dr. Hanna. That is one of the 
few works which, on its subject, must always be 
the unus liber ; it can never be rivalled, and 
never superseded. . And this, not only from the 
author's unequalled command of material, but 
also from the breadth and clearness of his mind, 
the accuracy of his judgment — loving his hero 
without making an idol of him, his insight into 
all the finer shades of character, his pleasant 
combination of gravity and humour, and the 
vigour and lucidity of his style. 

J. D. 

Westminster, 1870. 



&&$§^gg£®0 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

EARLY YEARS. 

Chalmers as a Boy — His Parentage — Boyish Characteristics 
— Reading — Resolves to be a Minister, 

CHAPTER II. 

FORMATION OF THE FUTURE MAN. 

Chalmers at the University — Dates of his various Steps — 
His Pursuits — His Intellect is awakened — Predisposi- 
tions of his Nature — His Intensity — He studies Mathe- 
matics — His passion for them — The Moral Engineer, . 



CHAPTER III. 

STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. 

He commences to Write — The Depth of his Awakening — 
He is touched with Scepticism — The Influence which 
led him to it — Jonathan Edwards proves a Helper — 
The French System of Nature — He struggles in Dark- 
ness — Professor Robison's Lectures, .... 



17 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 

He visits Liverpool twice — His First Sermon — His Letters 
Home — Description of Kilmany — He is Settled there 
— Figures as a Captain of Volunteers — His First 
Journey to London — Mild Whisky — He publishes 
his First Book — Impressions of his Preaching — His 
Idea of a Minister's Duties, 28 

CHAPTER V. 

A NE W MA N. 

Imperfect Religious Views — Bereavements — His own Ill- 
ness — Spiritual Changes — A New Man, . • 45 

CHAPTER VI. 

LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 

His Views of Marriage — A New Manse — His Sister's 
Marriage — His own Courtship and Marriage — His 
Usefulness as a Pastor — His Work on the Evidences — 
His Qualities as a Preacher — Kilmany Church crowded 
— Moderatism and the Gospel, 50 

CHAPTER VII. 

GLASGOW AND CHALMERS. 

The Names associated — Growth of Glasgow — Distinctions 
among its Population — Their Hospitality and Public 
Spirit — Chalmers appointed to the Tron, . . .66 



CONTENTS. xi 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 

The Parochial System — Self-governing Power of the Church 

— Pauperism, ........ 73 

CHAPTER IX. 

FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 

Auditors in the Crowd — Appearance of the Preacher — 
Passages from the Sermon — He thrills his Audience 
— Peroration, 84 

• 

CHAPTER X. 

THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 

Thursday Sermons — Quotations from his First — Purpose 

of the Series — Sensation on their being published, 96 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE GREA T PULPIT OR A TOR. 

Method of his Sermons — Breadth of his Subjects — Hall 
and Chalmers — His Power of Realizing — He preached 
from Manuscript — Styles — Chalmers had Two — Effect 
of Sermons as Orations — Various Instances — Preaches 
before the Royal Commissioner — The London Lectures 
on Church Establishments — His Vehement Nature — 
He preaches in Paris, 107 



xii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 

The Parochial System in Glasgow — His Work in St. John's 
— Localism — The Scotch Poor-Law — Chalmers' 
Method of Poor Management — Its Results — Its General 
Rules — Present Need of such Organization, . . 139 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE CITY OF GOD. 

Chalmers' Efforts for Man's Welfare — Rich and Poor must 
be united by Good-will — Parochial Extension and Ex- 
tinction of Pauperism, 164 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE PROFESSOR. 

Various Movements — Domestic Happiness — Death of his 
Father — Accepts Moral Philosophy Chair in St. 
Andrews — Afterwards Professor of Theology in Edin- 
burgh, and Principal of the Free Church College — His 
Teaching — Breathings of his Inner Life — His Power as 
a Professor, 171 

CHAPTER XV. 

INCIDENTS OF THE ST. ANDREWS TIME. 

Society in St Andrews — Chalmers' Buoyancy — Holiday 
Rambles — Visits Coleridge — Chalmers and Scott — 
His Mother's Death, 185 



CONTENTS. xiii 



CHAPTER XVI. 

POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 

Chalmers pleads for Catholic Emancipation — Recollections 
of the Meeting — Reform Agitation — Church Move- 
ments — His Political Economy published — His Theories 
— Sketch of the Work 197 



CHAPTER XVII. 

HOME HE A THENISM. 

The Water of Leith— Its Territorial Church— Church Ex- 
tension — Idea of Church and State — His Work 
arrested, 226 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

DISESTABLISHMENT BEGUN. 

The Evangelicals in the Church — The Veto Act — Opposi- 
tion of Parties, 240 

CHAPTER XIX. 

NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 

The Disappointment of Chalmers — His Trust in an Estab- 
lishment — Judicial Decisions and their Effects — No 
Help from Government — Speech before the Commis- 
sion — Chalmers foresees Disruption — His Scheme of 
Finance for a Free Church, 246 



xiv CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE FIVE HUNDRED. 

Convocation of Evangelical Ministers — Chalmers expounds 
his Scheme of Sustentation — Will they Come Out ? — 
Meeting of Assembly — The Commissioner's Reception 
— Scene in St. Andrew's Church — The Exit — Con- 
science is King — Canonmills Hall, .... 260 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 

Surprise at the Disruption — Chalmers' Views — He applies 
himself to Finance — Results — Present Position of 
Establishments — The new Poor - Law a Blow to 
Chalmers — Dr. Alison — Apparent Failure of Chalmers' 
Projects — Meek Resignation, 276 

CHAPTER XXII. 

SEASONS OF RECREA TION 

Not always on the Stretch — Chalmers and Wilberforce — 
Visits London — The Presbyterian Deputation — The 
Levee — Talleyrand — English Cathedrals — His Ear for 
Music — Drives through Derbyshire — Meets O'Connell 
— Reception at Oxford — Visits the Duke de Broglie — 
Character of that Nobleman — The Bullers of Buchan 
— Capacity for Work, 298 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE CHILD IS FA THER OF THE MAN 

Chalmers revisits Anster — Incident at Barnsmuir — Visits 
Yarrow and the Clyde 331 



CONTENTS. xv 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

HORjE SABBATICjE. 

His Growth in Holiness — His own Weakness — Christ the 
Way — Complains of Suspicions of Heresy — His Self- 
abasement — Prayers, 337 

CHAPTER XXV. 

THE LAST TROPHY. 

The' West Port— Organized— The Tan-Loft— Visit to a 
Meeting — Sabbath Services — New Chnrch opened, . 349 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

HE DIES A T HIS POST 

Visit to London — Examination as to Re-establishment — 
Interview with Carlyle — National Education — The 
Religious Difficulty — Visits Oxford, and Home — 
Retires on Sabbath Eve — Dies suddenly and without 
a Struggle, 362 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

IN MEMORIAM. 

The Funeral — The Mourning of a Nation — Scene at the 
Grave — General Estimate of Chalmers' Life, . . 376 



EARLY YEARS. 




F we suppose ourselves, in or about 
the year 1790, in the Ea$t-of-Fife 
town of Anstruther, commonly pro- 
nounced Anster, — ancient royal burgh and sea- 
port, formerly the seat of a brisk trade with 
Holland and France and Spain, but by that 
time sinking in decay, — we may chance to 
come upon the school children engaged in their 
various amusements. If so, we shall soon distin- 
guish one boy above the rest, seeming about 
ten or twelve years of age, who is the leader 
in their sports, — strong, active, merry, and 
boisterous, with big head, matted dark hair, 
large plain features, broad shoulders, well-pro- 
portioned but brawny limbs, his laugh always 
loudest, and his figure always foremost at foot- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 



ball and the other games in which they are 
contending. We notice, too, that he can make 
good use of his fists, not for the purposes of 
attack, but for the protection of the weaker 
schoolboys against the strong. We are told, 
upon inquiry, that this is TOM CHALMERS, 
— sturdy, brave, truthful, and generous, — the 
little hero of the school. He is son of John 
Chalmers, one of the most responsible men of 
the place, shipowner and general merchant, 
and sometime provost of the burgh, of a good 
old respectable family in the East of Fife. 
We have met him in our walks through the 
town, a man of stately and handsome appear- 
ance, and who bears the highest character for 
good sense and honourable dealing, urbanity, 
kindness, even jollity ; withal, a man of fervent 
but unostentatious piety. A George-the-Third 
Tory, we may also remark ; but, different from 
the fashionable Church - Moderatism usually 
conjoined with Toryism, he is a staunch Cal- 
vinist and a zealous Evangelical. The mother 
is Elizabeth Hall, daughter of a wine merchant 
in the neighbouring little seaport of Crail. She 
is truly the masculine parent, being a contrast 



EARLY YEARS. 



to the father in almost everything except their 
common veracity and integrity. She is short, 
thick, and rigidly erect in person ; almost pain- 
fully sincere and downright, wanting the suavity 
of her husband ; busy, exact, and authoritative 
in her household, but not harsh; intent upon 
duty, serious of mind, never relaxing ; sitting for 
a whole evening without a smile or a change of 
countenance, amid the jocund laughter of her 
husband and the congenial friends whom he 
gathers around him. Self-restrained and un- 
demonstrative, though she is a true partner to 
her husband in piety, as well as in domestic and 
business management, she exhibits outwardly 
none of his fervour of religious feeling. 

So grows up Tom Chalmers, caring for 
nothing but play and boyish revelry and com- 
panionship. He learns easily and well when 
he likes ; but he never likes, except to escape 
from the coal-hole, — the place of punishment at 
school, — where he is frequently put in durance. 
He reads little ; but, like so many boys, he has 
taken that wonderful journey of the Pilgrim's 
Progress ; and he has picked up and devoured 
greedily a queer book of its kind, attributed 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 



to Bishop Berkeley, The Adventures of Signior 
Guadentio di Lucca, giving marvellous relations 
of his encounters with Algerine pirates, and his 
travels up the Nile and across the African 
deserts, and of the Mezoranian people in the 
interior, with their city of Phor, their patriarchal 
government and primitive innocence. But his 
chief delight has been in a Pictorial Bible, 
where he learned, first from the illustrations, 
and afterwards from reading, the scenes and 
incidents and lessons of Scripture. His uncle, 
Thomas Ballardie, too (who had married one 
of his father's sisters, and after whom he was 
named), skilful mathematician and practical 
navigator, has been trying, but in vain, to 
initiate him in his own favourite science of 
mathematics. Beginning at the beginning, the 
uncle took a slate and made the mark of a 
point upon it. 'What is that?' 'A dot/ 
answered the boy. 'Try again.' 'A tick/ 
was the final reply. The boy knew the dot 
over the letter i in his copy book, and the 
tick used in games upon the slate, but the 
mathematician's point was a thing totally un- 
known. 



EARLY YEARS, 5 

Under the impulse of his early readings, 
however, he took something of an unconscious 
literary turn, different from his brothers, who 
had all taken to commerce or the sea. When 
a child, he formed the resolution of being a 
minister. This resolution sprang from none of 
the stirrings of early piety, of which we some- 
times hear; he showed none of the religious 
impressions which might have been expected 
of one brought up in such an exemplary home. 
It was merely because at that time the minister 
was the greatest and cleverest of men in the 
eyes of a country boy ; and if such a boy had 
any intellectual ambition in him, he generally 
aspired to distinguish himself in the pulpit 




II. 



FORMA TION OF THE FUTURE MAN. 




EXT time we meet with Chalmers is 
at the University of St. Andrews, 
where he entered as a student in 
session 1791-2, when he was in the twelfth 
year of his age. 

At this stage it will save interruptions and 
repetitions hereafter, and make many of our 
observations more intelligible, if we run over 
at once the chronology of his life from the time 
of his entering college up to (say) his twenty- 
fifth year. 

In session 1791-2, he entered the University 

of St Andrews. In 1793-4, and 1794-5, he 

began the study of mathematics, and proceeded 

to that of natural philosophy. In 1 795-6, he 

passed to the curriculum of theology. After 

6 



1 



FORMATION OF THE FUTURE MAN 7 

session 1797-8 he engaged himself as tutor 
in a family, but left them about the end of 

1798, and took a short concluding session in 

1799. He was licensed as a preacher, by the 
Presbytery of St Andrews, in July 1799. Not 
immediately obtaining employment, he spent 
session 1799- 1800 in Edinburgh, where he re- 
newed the study of mathematics under Playfair, 
and of natural philosophy under Robison ; and 
again, in session 1 800-1, studying chemistry 
under Hope, and moral philosophy and political 
economy under Dugald Stewart. The whole 
bent of his ambition at this time was not to 
be a working clergyman, but to be a professor 
at one of the universities, either of mathematics 
or of natural philosophy. In the summer of 
1 80 1 he went as assistant minister to Cavers, 
a parish on the Borders, near Hawick. In 
November 1802 he was appointed, much to his 
delight, assistant professor of mathematics in 
the University of St Andrews, under Professor 
Vilant, who had retired in consequence of ill 
health. About the same time he was nomi- 
nated minister of the parish of Kilmany, in 
Fife, which was in the gift of the University] 



8 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

but he was not ordained until the 12th of May 
1803. From a misunderstanding with Vilant, 
he was dismissed from his assistant professor- 
ship at the close of the session in 1803 ; but, to 
vindicate himself from this stigma, he opened 
an independent class of mathematics in St. 
Andrews in session 1803-4, and also delivered 
a course of lectures on chemistry, all in the face 
of marked opposition by the University autho- 
rities, and by his presbytery. He had at the 
same time to do ministerial duty at Kilmany. 
In session 1804-5, he repeated the chemical 
lectures at St Andrews, but dropt the class of 
mathematics. In 1805, the mathematical chair 
of Edinburgh becoming vacant, he offered him- 
self as a candidate, but was unsuccessful. 

From this time (about the end of 1805), failing 
to secure the coveted prize of a professorship, he 
sank down in the meantime into what he would 
deem the mediocrity — of parish minister of 
Kilmany. 

Reverting now to his university course: his 
two first sessions were wasted in much the same 
way as were his school days at Anster. He 
came to college too illiterate to have any pre- 



FORMATION OF THE FUTURE MAN 9 

paration or taste for the higher classics, even 
though expounded by John Hunter, one of the 
most admired scholars and grammarians of his 
day. ' He was at that time/ is the description 
by one of his college companions, — ' He was at 
that time very young and volatile, and boyish 
and idle in his habits. . . . During the first two 
sessions a great part of his time must have been 
occupied ... in boyish amusements, such as 
golf, foot-ball, and particularly hand-ball, in 
which latter he was remarkably expert, owing 
to his being left-handed.' But he continued, as 
at school, to be the favourite of his companions 
for fun, frolic, and gallantry. ' His character 
during all my acquaintance with him/ continues 
the same witness, 'was that of the strictest 
integrity and warmest affection.' 

It was in his fourteenth year — it was when he 
came in contact with the science of mathematics 
— that his intellect first awoke and gave indica- 
tion of its giant energies. A point now became 
something other to him than it was in his child- 
hood, when he told Uncle Ballardie that it was 
a dot or a tick. 

But we shall better understand his ardour in 



io THOMAS CHALMERS. 

mathematics, and see to the root of his future 
mental development, if we mark generally what 
were the predispositions of his nature, from 
which the intellectual seeds must derive their 
nourishment and fecundity. So much, in the 
forming of a man, always depends upon his 
constitutional peculiarities and his ruling dispo- 
sitions, — what we call the temperament of the 
man, — his idiosyncrasy, his special individualism. 
He was possessed, as we have seen, of a strong, 
active animal nature. Then he was of a most 
impetuous disposition ; most undisguised and 
unrestrained in all his feelings ; determined in 
resolution and will and execution ; vehement in 
all his moods and actions ; vehement in his 
affections, and, though incapable of malice or 
revenge, vehement when roused up to a feeling 
of indignation, or a spirit of resistance. This 
sort of vehemence he exhibited in those early 
times, half ludicrously, half fearfully, in his con- 
flicts with the family where he was tutor, and 
with the professors of St. Andrews, and with his 
presbytery, all as particularly set forth in the 
pages of his biographer, Dr. Hanna. Every- 
thing was real with him; everything took a 



FORMATION OF THE FUTURE MAN u 

palpable form to his mind, impressed him 
keenly, and touched him to the quick. 

Such a temperament as this — of strong ani- 
malism combined with vehement susceptibility, 
surcharged with electricity, both physical and 
mental — must always have tended to explosion, 
to excess of activity. The word that we shall 
use for it is intensity — constitutional intensity. 
Here, more than in anything else, lay the secret 
of his life, of his eloquence, of his religious and 
philanthropic achievements, of his sway over 
men, of his power, and occasionally of his weak- 
ness. He used to feel and sometimes complain 
of this intensity, calling it ' the redundant energy 
of his temperament.' At an early period he 
writes to his father : — ' My hands are full of 
business. I am living just now the life I seem 
to be formed for — a life of constant and unre- 
mitting activity. Deprive me of employment, 
and you condemn me to a life of misery and 
disgust* This intensity, when at times it got 
the better of him, would amount to a mania. 
He has often depicted it very graphically in his 
Journals, though in too severe a tone of self- 
depreciation ; in one place, as an ' industrious- 



12 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

ness from a mere principle of animal activity ; ' 
in another, as ' the entire devotion of my mind 
to any novelty which interests it, so as to sus- 
pend all regular occupation in the pursuit of it/ 
Hence it was that all dry and all commonplace 
people kept up the cry through his whole life 
— 'that Chalmers was mad J 9 

The classics had called forth no response from 
his mind. The classics, as taught in schools 
and colleges, are, in the form of them, the study 
of the ancient languages, their meaning, struc- 
ture, and the arrangement of their sentences, — 
that is criticism ; and as regards the subjects of 
them, consist chiefly of the highest models of 
poetry, or of history, — that is literature ; being 
the exercise of pure imagination, as in poetry, 
or of probable reasoning, as in the narratives 
and judgments of history. Chalmers had little 
of the critical and mere literary faculty — what 
makes a Hazlitt or a Jeffrey ; little of the pure 
imagination — what makes a Coleridge, or Shel- 
ley, or Tennyson ; he had no satisfaction in pro- 
bable reasoning ; he always strove to raise it up 
to the region of a demonstrative certainty. To 
such a mind the fancies and felicities of mere 



FORMATION OF THE FUTURE MAN 13 

classicalism could have little charm. But when 
mathematics came before him, with its defined 
magnitudes and their necessary properties, he 
found a something which exactly filled the crav- 
ings of his mind ; not imaginations, not proba- 
bilities, but the real constituents of the universe, 
the palpable existences of nature, their proper- 
ties and relations evolved each from each, with 
an absolute, an all-satisfying certainty. 

Having now found in mathematics the true 
counterpart of his mind, he plunged into the 
study of it with the intensity of his tempera- 
ment, almost with the fixed idea of a mania. 
He was absorbed, transported into the regions 
of abstraction ; was often insensible to all 
around ; ' giving his whole mind to it/ we are 
informed by the same companion from whom 
we have been quoting, ' and often pursuing some 
favourite, or even as we thought some foolish 
idea, whilst we were talking around him, and 
perhaps laughing at his abstraction, or breaking 
in upon his cogitations, and pronouncing him 
the next thing to mad/ 

This strongly pronounced mathematical turn 
of mind was not a temporary crotchet, but abode 



14 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

with him as the mould of his whole intellect 
Mathematics was his engrossing study up to at 
least his thirtieth year ; and till the great over- 
spreading change took place in his character, 
it was the dream of his ambition to be a ma- 
thematical professor. His mathematical one- 
ideadness was afterwards qualified by an al- 
most equal love for natural philosophy. Here 
he had to reach his data, not by abstract defi- 
nitions and postulates as in mathematics — by 
deduction; but by skilfully conducted experi- 
ments — by induction. He thus became eventu- 
ally, as it were, a mathematico-physicist This 
mingled passion for mathematics and physics 
determined his modes of reasoning, whatever 
the department of thought in which he might 
ultimately be engaged. That is, he would 
always show a dislike for a mere bundle of 
probabilities. Even in departments where the 
conclusion could only be a balance of probabi- 
lities, — as in ethics, for example, or political 
economy, — he would always endeavour to re- 
duce and force his reasoning into a mathe- 
matico-physical shape ; that is, from certain 
data collected by induction, as in physics, he 



FORMATION OF THE FUTURE MAN 15 

would follow his conclusion down to its ultimate 
consequences by a process of rigid deduction, 
as in mathematics. This was always the type 
of his reasoning ; he was not a roving disquisi- 
tionist, his effort was always to be — a necessary 
demonstrator. So thoroughly did he feel this, 
that he used to say in after years, to a fellow- 
presbyter with whom he often laboured in cases 
before the Church courts, ' Give me the one 
main point of the case, and 111 work it out ; 
I cannot scatter myself over a multitude of 
points.' He always seemed, as preacher, theo- 
logian, philanthropist, to be dealing with clear- 
drawn figures, with real tangible elements, with 
things that he could lay his hands upon — so / 

Look then at this substratum of his mind. 
It was a rare formation ; very extraordinary, 
yet very simple ; the elements few in num- 
ber, but in. a state of unusual energy, and 
elements that are rarely found together. The 
result must be a mind and life simple, direct, 
strong in impetus, wonderfully powerful He 
has the hard matter-of-factness and strict de- 
duction of the mathematician and natural philo- 
sopher, with the fiery ring all around them 



16 THOMAS CHALMEXS. 

of an intensity which might make the lyrical 
poet or the man of extreme action. His ma- 
thematico - physicism fixes him into' absolute, 
immoveable convictions ; his constitutional in- 
tensity heats up these convictions into living 
powers. What a magazine of force must there 
be in such a man, if it can only be drawn forth, 
and find proper channels of communication ! 
What vitality of belief, what concentration of 
will, what definiteness of aim, what a rush and 
whirl of emotion, what a leap over obstacles at 
which colder temperaments would stand aghast ! 
His own estimate of himself was, that if 
Nature had fitted him for one thing more than 
another, it was to be a military engineer. Ap- 
parently a correct estimate. But in the exer- 
cise of the selfsame qualities he became the 
Moral Engineer of Scotland — the constructor 
of works for the benefit and elevation of man, 
which are acknowledged as models through the 
whole bounds of Christendom, 



III. 



STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. 




HIS awakening of an intellect so long 
inert, but so vivid when once kindled, 
could not be confined to the mere 
ardent pursuit of mathematics and physics ; it 
sought vent for itself in the outlets of literary 
composition. It was then he commenced writ- 
ing essays and exercises, which he soon did with 
facility, and in a pointed and emphatic style, 
containing the germ of his future peculiar man- 
nerism. 

But — most momentous of all — this intense 
agitation reached down to the very foundation 
of his beliefs — his young instinctive impressions, 
in politics, in morals, in religion, — in fact, to the 
essential conditions of his being. 

The eighteenth century, as we all know, was 

B 



18 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

a violent reaction against the previous ages of 
easy and passive belief ; it was a time of merci- 
less denudation, of merciless destruction ; every 
opinion deemed heretofore sacred, was stripped 
bare and held up to derision, and then trampled 
to death. Hume, with his subtleties, had re- 
duced all causes in nature, even the person- 
ality of man, to mere associations of the mind. 
The universe was a shuffling of cards ; there 
was no certainty of a God, of immortality, of 
moral responsibility. Voltaire made a mere 
mockery of the Christian religion, as a silly 
and worn-out superstition, not deserving to be 
argued with, but only to be hooted out of the 
world with contempt Then came the 'last 
word' of the French Encyclopedists, beyond 
which it was impossible for the grossest pro- 
fanity to go : that all that exists is only so 
much dirt in motion ; and that the destiny 
and happiness of man consists in following 
the propensities of that dirt of which he is 
composed. These various forms of scepticism, 
materialism, and brutism prevailed largely, 
though somewhat secretly, amongst the literati 
and upper class of Scotland, and had infected 



STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. 19 

even the professors of the universities and the 
ministers of the Church. It was evidently by 
the hands of his own academic superiors that 
Chalmers, when a lad of seventeen, was first 
drenched in this pollution. 

A favourite pupil of his mathematical profes- 
sor, Dr. James Brown, he was early admitted to 
his esoteric parties, with Leslie, afterwards Sir 
John, and James Mylne, afterwards Professor 
of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, — all ' marked 
men/ says the same fellow-student from whom 
we have already quoted, 'ultra Whigs, keen 
reformers, and what would now be called Radi- 
cals.' From these conversations, but especially 
from reading the Political Justice of Godwin, 
who, for a while, was the oracle of his opinions, 
he kicked away his hereditary Toryism, writhed 
under the oppressions of existing society, and 
longed for that era of social equality and human 
perfectibility which Godwin dangled before his 
youthful fancy. But chiefly he bowed before 
the idol of philosophical necessity, so far fami- 
liar to him as bearing some resemblance to his 
father's predestinatiM ; but Calvin's rod turned 
into Godwin's serpent Predestination was har- 



20 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

dened into Fatalism ; and the tempter whis- 
pered : 

'AH things are eternally fixed, — the place 
and qualities of every atom, the movement 
of every body and every system, the links of 
circumstances that form the chain of events. 
Is there any standing-room left for a God? 
Certainly there is none for a providence/ 

The youth now paid the penalty of every 
one who tries the lock of these inscrutable 
questions; he was thrown prostrate on the 
ground, and struck with blindness. 'What! 
no room, no room in this universe for God ? ' 

A grave, solemn, but devout-minded teacher 
passed by, named Jonathan Edwards, who 
raised the fallen youth, and breathed words 
of comfort into his ear. 

'My son, all is fixed from eternity, that is 
true; but how fixed? It cannot be by unin- 
telligent chance, which is mere unsettlement, 
and can fix nothing. Intelligence alone can 
fix motions and events ; Supreme Intelligence 
alone can fix universal order. "He doeth ac- 
cording to His will in the army of heaven, 
and among the inhabitants of the earth ; and 



STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. 21 

none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, 
What doest Thou ? " ' 

Now then, universally through all things — the 
spheres of space, the phenomena of earth, the 
hearts of men, the revolutions of society — he 
beheld the almighty Hand, guiding and attuning 
all and each — each in its specific function, all in 
its majestic harmony — until the whole temple 
of Nature resounded with one unbroken song 
of rejoicing and praise. He could not restrain 
his emotions ; they unfitted him for the meaner 
converse of society; his intensity shook him 
from his slumbers in the early mornings, and 
impelled him into the companionless solitudes 
of the country, there to indulge alone, in the 
eye of his Maker, under the canopy of heaven, 
in visions unutterable, incommunicable. ' I 
spent nearly a twelvemonth/ he thus describes 
his exaltations, — ' I spent nearly a twelvemonth 
in a sort of mental Elysium ; and the one idea 
which ministered to my soul all its rapture, 
was the magnificence of the Godhead, and 
the universal subordination of all things to the 
one great purpose for which He evolved and 
was supporting creation/ 



22 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Child of the dust, crushed before the moth ! 
thou shalt pay dearly for these exaltations. 
There will come the sickness and low fever of 
reaction. For thy twelvemonth of 'mental 
Elysium/ thou shalt have many years of mental 
agony and torture. A darker tempter than 
Godwin now came to his side, in the shape of 
the French System of Nature. — 

'Young man, lover of truth, contemner of 
hollow sounds and superstition ! clear thyself 
of those last distempered dreams in which 
thou art so fondly indulging, — an invisible, 
incomprehensible God, creating and filling and 
directing all things. Fear and suffering and 
ignorance have raised up the phantom of a 
God, and then trembled before it Truth and 
peace are alone to be found in the blank ne- 
gation of atheism, — in a world made bare of 
any superior being to think of, to worship, or 
to fear. What seest thou, keen-eyed young 
mathematician and physicist, — what seest 
thou everywhere but only matter and motion? 
These account for all things, without flying 
abroad into abstractions. As for man, boastful 
man ! he is no more than the clod of the valley 



STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. 23 

or the ape of the desert ; he is only matter 
arrived at a higher stage of motion. His 
thought and will are secretions of his brain; 
his beliefs are delusions ; he is but a blind tool 
in the hand of inevitable necessity. What more 
remains of him, when the chemistry of life leaves 
him lying there, a helpless and loathsome ruin ? 
Thy only immortality is fame : be a great mathe- 
matician, a great something, to live for genera- 
tions in the breath of posterity. Above all, live 
for thyself; thou hast nothing else to regard, 
nothing else to attend to. Conscience is a 
ghost seen by the coward in the dark. Duty 
is the lowest of slavery. Young man ! live for 
thyself, for appetite, for pleasure ; fear nothing, 
hope nothing, believe nothing, and thou shalt 
be a perfect man ! ' 

Alas ! alas ! and has all his thirst for know- 
ledge, all his eager pursuit of truth, brought 
him only to this goal at last — the utter blank 
of Nothingness ? His anguish was fearful ; it 
threatened to dethrone his reason. The same 
fellow-student, from whom we have learned so 
much of his youthful story, lifts up a corner 
of the veil from his present mental sufferings : 



24 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

1 He came to me at St Andrews in a state of 
great excitement and unhappiness, and lived 
with me during the rest of the session. . . . 
Those who were not particularly acquainted 
with him thought him going fast into a state 
of derangement. One very common expression 
in his public prayers, and which showed the 
state of his mind at that time, — " Oh, give us 
some steady object for our mind to rest upon ! " 
— was uttered with all his characteristic earnest- 
ness and emphasis. I knew that he was ex- 
ceedingly earnest in seeking the light of truth 
at that time in his private devotion ; and was 
often on his knees at my bedside after I had 
gone to bed/ 

It was many years before he found his way 
out of this labyrinth. He was too truthful and 
sincere to satisfy himself with commonplaces, or 
to still the gnawings of his heart with opiates. 
He waited and waited, and turned in every 
direction. Then, from the lectures of Professor 
Robison, when he was in his twenty-first year, 
the true light dawned upon his mind, and 
showed him a pathway from the miry pit of 
Atheism. 



STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. 25 

'Our minds/— so did the HEALING VOICE 
address him, — 'our minds are so constituted 
from our earliest years, that we certainly expect 
and undoubtingly believe a uniform recurrence 
of events to follow from the same combination 
of circumstances ; and the events of nature do 
uniformly follow in accordance with the human 
expectation and belief. We see this belief im- 
planted in the mind of the infant antecedently 
to all experience ; and the gathering experience 
of years, far from showing it to be fallacious, 
adds daily and hourly proof of its reality. How 
soon does the infant expect with certainty that 
a sound will proceed from the shaking of its 
rattle ! How proverbially soon does it dread 
the fire from its certain expectation of being 
burned ! The boy expects with all the certainty 
of fact the time when he will gather nuts, and 
the time also when he will slide upon the ice. 
The farmer, when his hand scatters the grain in 
early spring, is equally certain that the same 
hand will reap the crop in autumn ; his expec- 
tation is as certain to his mind as his actual 
sensation ; he is as sure of the future as of the 
present fact The sailor expects the very hour 



26 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and minute when his bark will be floated by the 
advancing tide; nay, he can reckon with cer- 
tainty upon the prevailing winds and currents 
of the ocean, so long as the same conditions of 
nature remain unaltered. The astronomer is 
not more certain that he actually sees the pole- 
star on any given night, than that, if alive, he 
shall see the comet which, in the order of 
nature, must appear five years hence. In short, 
man from his earliest years expects nature to 
be constant ; and nature is constant according 
to his expectations. In other words, the consti- 
tution of the mind and the constitution of 
nature are adapted to each other by a pre- 
established harmony. Can dull, unplanning 
matter, can mere whirling, unplanning motion, 
produce this ? Can ever-variable chance pro- 
duce ever-invariable certainty ? It is an abuse 
of words, a mere impudent defiance of common 
reason. When such contradictions in terms are 
uttered as philosophy, we can only fall back 
upon our inward-speaking reason, and shut our 
ears against the presumptuous babblers. The 
promise in the mind is fulfilled in nature. The 
promise and the fulfilment exactly agreeing, are 



STRUGGLES OF THE SOUL. ¥j 

indubitable marks of a designing Intelligence, 
and must emanate from one and the same 
source. The Promiser and the Fulfiller then are 
intelligent, are one, and must be omnipotent ; 
that is to say, the Promiser and Fulfiller is God. 
He hath also in thy mind promised thee the 
inheritance of a blessed immortality ; but has 
commanded thee not to live to thyself, but in 
obedience to His own monitor in thy breast — 
conscience. Therefore, young man, be sure that 
this certain expectation shall meet with its real 
event: the promise of immortality shall be 
followed by a glorious fulfilment ! ' 




IV. 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 




;UT it was then, as it was ever after- 
wards : if we looked only at the fer- 
ment of his mind, he would appear 
thoroughly over-wrought in brain and strength, 
likely enough to come soon to the grave or a 
madhouse; yet if we looked at him next in 
his gambols and rambles and pleasantries, we 
were relieved of all apprehension, by finding 
him the most healthy, sociable, and light- 
hearted of men. This peculiarity must always 
be kept in view, otherwise the most erroneous 
impressions will be formed of his character, and 
of the aspect which he bore to the world lying 
around him. This STUDY of ours must be 
short, and can seize him only in his most 
energetic attitudes ; but the reader must always 

28 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 29 

carry along with him the understanding, that 
Chalmers, all through his life, to the very end, 
busy as he was, and troubled and depressed as 
he often felt, had time for everything — had his 
perennial seasons of relaxation, of travel, of wide 
social intercourse, of the most full-souled enjoy- 
ment 

In the midst of the mental agitations which 
we have been describing, he paid a visit to his 
eldest brother James, in Liverpool ; and in his 
Diary of the journey we find neither senti- 
mentality nor rhapsody, not a trace of his late 
agonies, but minute records of the shiftings of 
the wind in the Forth, of the locks in the 
Glasgow Canal, the number of steps up to 
Dumbarton Castle, the population and dock- 
dues of Liverpool, the ploughed and pasture 
land of Cheshire, and so forth. 

He paid a second visit in the summer of 
1799, when newly licensed, and he preached his 
first sermon in Wigan. James — not unlike his 
namesake in As you Like It — dry, sententious, 
and mocking, yet significant in his mockery 
— gives us the first etching of Thomas Chalmers 
as a. pulpit orator* 



30 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

'His mode of delivery is expressive, his 
language beautiful, and his arguments very 
forcible and strong. His sermon contained a 
due mixture both of the doctrinal and practical 
parts of religion, but I think it inclined rather 
more to the latter. ... It is the opinion of 
those who pretend to be judges that he will 
shine in the pulpit; but as yet he is rather 
awkward in his appearance. We, however, are 
at some pains in adjusting his dress, manner, 
etc. ; but he does not seem to pay any great 
regard to it himself. His mathematical studies 
seem to occupy more of his time than the re- 
ligious/ 

James then encloses some letters to the 
family by Thomas himself, — ' if you can read 
them, adds the humorist, the said Thomas's 
writing being as illegible as his dress was 
unfashionable. In neither did he improve as 
years rolled on. In writing he became worse, 
till his good father used to lay aside his letters 
in a desk, saying, 'Tom will read them to us 
himself when he next comes to Anster.' 

In 1805, when in his twenty -fifth year, 
Chalmers gave up for a time his dream of 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 31 

professorial eminence ; he would rather seek 
the laurels of popular authorship. These were 
in the gift of a free and discerning public, and 
could not be kept back by the intrigues of 
any small or envious coterie. He would, in the 
meantime, sit down in his manse of Kilmany; 
and as, in his opinion recorded in a pamphlet 
which he published about this time, 'there is 
almost no consumption of intellectual effort 
in the peculiar employment of a minister/ he 
would be ready to throw himself into any 
subject or engagement which passing events 
might bring round. 

Kilmany, being interpreted by Gaelic scholars, 
is said to mean — the church of the valley. 

The fine bold range of the Ochils terminates 
to the east on the confines of Fife ; when there 
begins a lower series of undulating ridges, 
generally running parallel, intermingled with 
detached hills, and trending towards the east 
coast. These parallel ridges enclose their 
several valleys. The central and principal is 
that of the river Eden, which finally discharges 
itself into St Andrew's Bay. To the north is 
the vale of Kilmany, which is the northernmost 



32 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

of these Fife valleys ; for next, over the heights, 
is the great estuary of the Tay rolling past 
Dundee. 

It is a short and narrow vale, hemmed in by 
those parallel ridges of which we have spoken. 
It is about six miles in length, and never more 
than three in width, often. much narrower. A 
number of gathering rills draw together in it, 
and form into a stream which is called the 
Moutray. This stream is small and noways 
conspicuous ; it is oftener out of sight than in, 
and constitutes no feature of the landscape to 
the ordinary traveller. At the entrance to the 
vale, Norman Law rears its lordly head — 
a far-seen beacon in the vale itself, and all 
over Forfarshire and Fife, and away even 
to Edinburgh. The enclosing heights are 
frequently steep, but not rough or bare; they 
are either cultivated or are soft pasture up 
to the top. The fields at the bottom are 
in a state of perfect cultivation, interspersed 
with pleasant hedgerows ; and the country, both 
hill and plain, is adorned with woods, and no 
less with comfortable farmhouses and cottages, 
and snug mansions on the slopes of the hills. 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 33 

It is, in one word, a fertile and smiling agricul- 
tural district 

Near the middle, lying low on the banks of 
the stream, is the hamlet of Kilmany, with some 
eighty people, with its humble but decent 
cottages, saw -mill, smith's forge, carpenter's 
shop, and other signs of rustic activity. It is 
embosomed in a grove of very fine old trees — 
ash, elm, and plane. The manse, which dates 
from 1 8 10, is meanly situated, built of a cold 
dark-grey stone of the district, without any 
style or ornament, and has nothing externally 
of that cosiness and amenity which commonly 
distinguish the country manse. Its only redeem- 
ing point is a good lookout to the southern 
hills ; and I believe one of the western windows 
commands a peep of the lordly Norman Law. 
The church — the church of the valley — has a 
better situation, at the head of the village, on a 
raised green mound — one would suppose it arti- 
ficial — above a bend of the Moutray. It is fenced 
round by stately rows of ash and plane trees, and 
has a full view of the hills behind and before, 
and down the vale as it stretches to the Leuchars 

plain below, on the margin of the ocean. 

C 



34 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Though a cultivated and busy district, with 
an intelligent population, and nothing primitive 
or far-back about it, yet it has all the charm 
of the most perfect seclusion. Its hilly ridges 
seem to close it in from all outer communica- 
tion; there is nowhere any opening, or peep 
into any world beyond ; it sees only its own 
hill-tops, hears only the fall of its own waters, 
the song of its own birds. It is far from 
any considerable town, and the journey diffi- 
cult. It is far from any leading highway. It 
has no remarkable beauty, no striking pic- 
turesqueness ; yet its characteristics are emi- 
nently pleasing — fertility, verdure, richness of 
garniture; all the fruits of abundance; all the 
peace of seclusion, with all the signs of civilisa- 
tion. 

In this Kilmany, Thomas Chalmers set up 
his household, in an old dilapidated manse, — 
this was before the present one was erected. 
His sister Jane was installed as housekeeper; 
and the whole tribe of younger brothers and 
sisters were always hiving up from the dry, 
sandy, rocky coast of Anster, to the soft plea- 
sant banks of the Moutray. 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 35 

Chalmers was still the same gallant, truthful, 
lovable being ; but he had a good deal of the 
reckless, and violent, and foolish ; was eccentric 
in his habits, and fond of frolic. He figured 
at this time very prominently as a captain 

m 

of Volunteers in Fife, filled the pulpit with 

philippics against Bonaparte, and was prouder 

of his military uniform than of his clerical 

gown. 

One day, as he was preaching-^-it is to be 

hoped a week-day — happening to raise his arm 

in a sweep of eloquence, the scarlet coat glanced 

out from under the folds of his canonical robes. 

Another day, when a complimentary dinner was 

to be given at St Andrews to the officers of the 

corps, he appeared on the streets in full flash 

of scarlet coat and white breeches. Meeting a 

neighbour clergyman, who was a stickler for the 

proprieties, Chalmers advanced and saluted him 

with a proud consciousness of his very superior 

accoutrements. 
'How d'ye do?' 

' Very well, thank you/ was the answer ; ' but 
you have the advantage over me, I do not know 
who addresses me.' 



36 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

' Don't know me ? Hypocrisy ! you know me 
perfectly — Chalmers of Kilmany.' 

' Forgive me, sir/ replied the inexorable tor- 
mentor, ' you must be joking. You do certainly 
bear a resemblance to Mr. Chalmers ; but I am 
sure my friend has too much good sense to ap- 
pear in a dress so unbecoming his profession. 9 

Chalmers was sadly mortified, but took the 
hint ; and so far reduced the splendour of his 
habiliments, that, going to a friend in St 
Andrews, he borrowed a black coat, which he 
substituted for his scarlet one. 

It may be noted in passing, that he made his 
first journey to London in 1807, and saw all the 
'lions;' but what was most memorable, from 
some very imperfect experiments which he saw 
at a lecture there, aided by his own chemical 
knowledge, he was amongst the first who had a 
distinct forecast of the introduction of gas as the 
means of lighting our streets and houses. 

He often entertained his parishioners, as well 
as the inhabitants of the neighbouring dales, 
with lectures on chemistry and other branches 
of science. 

He also applied his chemical skill to the 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 37 

improvement of Scotch drink, — to producing a 
very mild and agreeable whisky ; although, it 
must be remembered, he was always most 
moderate in his own libations. He was in the 
habit of going over on Saturday nights to a 
neighbouring minister's, then a bachelor like 
himself, and arranging to exchange pulpits on 
the Sunday. He was always flush with some 
new topic, or new discovery. On one occasion 
it was, ' Do you know, man, I have discovered 
a simple method to produce the mildest and 
most delicious whisky ? ' 

' Indeed ! how do you manage that ?-' 

'Purely by the action of the atmosphere. 
It's quite a mistake to cork your bottles and 
exclude the air. No, sir, take out the cork 
and throw open the cupboard -door, and the 
air acting upon the spirit, gives it, sir, a most 
delightful mildness/ 

On the Sunday morning, as his neighbour 
mounted for Kilmany, he said with unbounded 
glee : 

' I don't know what you'll get to eat, but I 
know what you'll get to drink. The whisky, sir, 
is unrivalled — very mild, you know, very mild.' 



3? THOMAS CHALMERS. 

In the evening, as his friend returned, 
Chalmers came out and hailed him with his 
usual hearty salutations. Remembering his 
boast: 

' Well, sir, anything to eat? ' 

' Oh, as much as I wanted.' 

And with a significant leer, 'Anything to 
drink?' 

' Oh yes ! I got plenty to drink.' 

' Ah, capital ! well — ' 

'Well, when I arrived in the morning, as I 
was hot with riding, I took a glass of your 
whisky, and as I found it very mild, I took 
two before going up to preach.' 

'Well, sir?' 

'After the service I took some dinner, and 
sat and finished the bottle.' 

'Finished the bottle!' gasped Chalmers in 
astonishment. 'Come, nonsense! if you had 
finished the bottle, you would not have been 
here to tell the tale.' 

'Oh yes, I finished the bottle. The fact is, 
Mr. Chalmers, you're a bachelor as well as 
myself, and if you take the cork out of your 
whisky bottle, and throw open your cupboard- 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 39 

door, it will soon be a very mild whisky — yours 
was mostly water. 1 

Chalmers looked a little crestfallen ; but at 
last, with strong faith in the chemical action of 
air, and large charity for all men and women- 
kind, he gulped down the insinuation against 
his maid-servant, and persisted : 

'No, sir, no! you were deceived by its ex- 
treme mildness ; purely the action of the at- 
mosphere ! ' 

He addicted himself also, by a strong mental 
propension, to the rising discussions of Political 
Economy, and burned with ambition to come 
out as a distinguished author. In 1808 ap- 
peared his first regular work, — it was on the 
National Resources, — mainly to prove that 
Bonaparte's decrees and blockades against our 
foreign trade could not destroy, nor even seri- 
ously cripple, our internal wealth and industry 
and means of defence. One thing was striking 
from the first, that he bent the whole energies of 
his thought, not so much on the abstruser theories 
of political economy, as on those practical and 
.vital problems which tend to meet the diffi- 
culties, and ameliorate the condition of the 



40 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

working classes. He was the first political 
economist who seized, with a foresight and 
philanthropy equally before his time, upon 
the condition-of-the-people question y as the para- 
mount, the coming question of the age. 

He was sufficiently regular in his ministerial 
duties, for he was an honourable man, and 
would perform what he had undertaken; and 
being sociable, moreover, and homely, and 
humorous, compassionate and kind-hearted, he 
loved to rove and visit amongst his parish- 
ioners, join in their merriest laughter, and bear 
the burden of their troubles. 

His preaching, too, it must be remembered, 
and his oratory in the Church courts, was about 
as remarkable at this time, though confined to 
a provincial theatre, as it became afterwards in 
his days of widest renown. His composition, 
his delivery, started at once to an early matu- 
rity, and were thoroughly characteristic from 
the beginning. He was always the same in 
his intellectual powers and external peculi- 
arities : the change came over his beliefs, his 
subjects, his whole sentiments ; but the ascen- 
dency of his genius was always confessed. At 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 41 

college he was the paragon of eloquence as 
well as of real ability. ' I remember still/ 
testifies one of his early auditors, Burns of 
Kilsyth, ' after the lapse of fifty-two years, the 
powerful impression made by his prayers in 
the Prayer Hall, to which the people of St. 
Andrews flocked when they knew that Chal- 
mers was to pray. The wonderful flow of 
eloquent, vivid, ardent description of the attri- 
butes and works of God, and still more, per- 
haps, the astonishing harrowing delineation of 
the miseries, the horrid cruelties, immoralities, 
and abominations inseparable from war, which 
always came in more or less in connection with 
the bloody warfare in which we were engaged 
with France, — called forth the wonderment of 
the hearers. He was then only sixteen years 
of age; yet he showed a taste and capacity 
for composition of the most glowing and elo- 
quent kind. Even then his style was very 
much the same as at the period when he at- 
tracted so much notice, and made such power- 
ful impression in the pulpit and by the press/ 
Dr. Craik of Libberton (in Lanarkshire), him- 
self a man of solid and vigorous mind, was first 



42 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

impressed with the high abilities of Chalmers 
by hearing him in their Debating Society, 
when he was a youth of sixteen, open on the 
affirmative side of the question, ' Is a Divine 
Revelation necessary?' Then, after he was a 
preacher, his brother James's etching of his first 
sermon at Wigan will be remembered ; and we 
have also this graphic note, from a diary kept 
at the time by Dr. Duff of Kenmore, under 
date of 1 2th September 1802 : — 'Went out to 
hear Mr. Thomas Chalmers preach at Denino 
(about six miles from St. Andrews). Spoke in 
a strain of glowing eloquence; but was much 
too violent in gesture, and had none of the 
graces of good delivery.' Very much what 
fastidious critics would have said, and did say 
of him, when he was even in the noon of his 
fame. One of his neighbours and most inti- 
mate acquaintances during his early years in 
Kilmany, a ripe and correct scholar, and who, 
in the vicissitudes of his youth, had lived in 
London, and been in the habit of hearing 
Burke, and Pitt, and Fox, and Sheridan in the 
House of Commons, used frequently to men- 
tion, after Chalmers had attained his eminence, 



FIRST YEARS IN KILMANY. 43 



'that his abilities were quite as conspicuous 
when in Kilmany, and that his eloquence, 
especially sometimes in their Church courts, was 
quite as astonishing and overpowering/ Though 
separated from him by the change in his views 
and his ecclesiastical connections, this gentleman 
would add with perfect candour : ' None of us 
were surprised when he became so famous ; 
we all knew he would be the first man in Scot- 
land, though not perhaps in the way that actu- 
ally turned out' From all these accounts, we 
can easily see him, dashing off his sermon 
quick as the pen could run in the late hours 
of Saturday night, and then ; on Sunday 
thundering away in that dreary oblong barn 
of a church at Kilmany ; and descanting to the 
bewildered rustics, like a Stoic teacher before 
the coming of Christ, on all the cardinal and 
minor virtues, or horrifying them with pictures 
of bloody war, or rousing their manly breasts 
to meet and repel the Corsican invader, like 
undegenerate sons of the 

' Scots wha ha'e wr* Wallace bled, 
Scots wham Bruce has aften led.' 



44 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

He held a minister's duties to be very trifling. 
He asserted, in the pamphlet which has been 
alluded to, ' from what to him is the highest of 
all authority, the authority of his own experi- 
ence, that, after the satisfactory discharge of his 
parish duties, a. minister may enjoy five days 
in the week in uninterrupted leisure for the pro- 
secution of any science in which his taste may 
dispose him to engage.' True to his maxim, he 
toiled away at his mathematics, in the hope of 
one day being a professor. 

So months and years rolled on with Thomas 
Chalmers at Kilmany, — a powerful, but an 
aimless man ! 




V. 



A NEW MAN. 




E was now definitively relieved from the 
more, gloomy temptations to which 
he had so long been exposed; the 
demons of scepticism and materialism fled for 
ever from his path. So far he had found ' some 
steady object for his mind to rest upon.' He 
could rest upon an inward consciousness of God, 
as the Creator and Supreme Ruler of the uni- 
verse; he admired His works, and he adored 
His wisdom and goodness. Further, by the 
study especially of Butler's Analogy ; he had 
satisfied himself that Christianity was from 
God, and that the Bible had the credentials 
of a Divine Revelation. 

But the low, pestilential atmosphere in which 
he had lived, had corrupted his blood ; and it 

45 



46 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

was long before all the taints were washed out 
He saw little in the Bible but what the elder 
English Deists had admitted — a republication 
of the law of nature. It was little more than 
a code of the purest morality. The death of 
Christ had, in some manner inexplicable, re- 
moved all the obstacles that lay in the way of 
man's salvation ; and man had nothing now to 
do but obey the commandments of God, and, by 
a life of virtue, prepare himself for the perfec- 
tion and unalloyed felicity of heaven. He must 
do his best, and the death of Christ would make 
up for his deficiencies. Such was about the 
sum of his present theology. 

He enters at length his thirtieth year. Afflic- 
tion and bereavement now invade the family, 
hitherto unbroken. First a brother, George — a 
sweet brave youth, commander of the ship ' Bar- 
ton' in the time of the war — though only twenty- 
three— comes home on a visit, only to die of 
wounds and exposure. He falls gently asleep, 
saying, ' I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from 
the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto 
babes.' Next drops a sister Barbara, cut off in 



A NEW MAN 47 



her flowerhood by the fell breath of consump- 
tion. Two other sisters are threatened. Good 

* 

uncle Ballardie dies alone and without warning 
in the night, is found next morning on his knees, 
as if he had expired in the act and attitude of 
prayer. Chalmers himself is laid prostrate with 
a severe, wasting, and dangerous disease, con- 
fined to bed, and forbidden to speak. He is 
brought to the gates of death ; known only to 
God whether he also is to be swallowed up. 
For. four months he never left his room; for 
upwards of half a year he never entered the 
pulpit ; it was more than a twelvemonth before 
he could resume his parochial duties. ' I cer- 
tainly never saw any person/ said his college 
friend, Thomas Duncan, 'so much altered in 
the same space of time, being then greatly at- 
tenuated, while formerly he was corpulent He 
was scarcely able to walk across the room. It 
was a year or two before he recovered ; and 
during that period he had much the appearance 
of an old man, of one who would never be able 
again for much exertion.' 

Changes are going on in the soul even more 
entire and more eventful than those of the body. 



48 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

From that dim and lonely chamber issue forth 
these words: 'My confinement has fixed on 
my heart a very strong impression of the in- 
significance of time. . . . This should be the 
first step to another impression still more salu- 
tary — the magnitude of eternity. Strip human 
life of its connection with a higher scene of ex- 
istence, and it is the illusion of an instant, an un- 
meaning farce, a series of visions and projects and 
convulsive efforts, which terminate in nothing. 9 

We forbear tracing out these changes, which 
spread over a space of nearly three years. 
They were not sudden, except in their begin- 
ning ; they were not violent ; they were not 
terrifying, as some have experienced. They 
were gradual, total, fundamental, growing as 
the light grows ; they were deep and long as 
life. By a process of logical exhaustion, as it 
were, he was finally shut up to these leading 
conclusions : that he himself and all men are 
naturally alienated from God, and even in a 
state of enmity against Him ; that divine love 
hath devised a scheme of reconciliation in the 
person and mediatorship of Christ ; free forgive- 
ness by His atonement ; new holy life by His 



A NEW MAN 49 



Spirit Reconciled, man enters upon eternal 
life; unreconciled, man is doomed to eternal 
death. 

After his own nature was completely re- 
moulded, so that there never was a man more 
truly a new man than Thomas Chalmers, he pro- 
ceeded with characteristic intensity to cry aloud 
to his brethren, and warn them of their infatua- 
tion and danger. He likens himself at this time 
to one who sees his friend rushing towards a pre- 
cipice, where there must be instant destruction. 
He flies to his rescue ; he warns, entreats, clings 
to him ; kneels and weeps to stop him in his 
fatal course; and never leaves him till, either 
deaf to warning, he falls a victim to his folly, 
or, hearkening to the voice of persuasion, turns 
aside into the paths of safety. 

The humblest, the most unassuming of men 
in himself, Chalmers now feels that he is charged 
with a divine message of reconciliation ; he rises 
to the height of his commission, and proclaims 
to all around — 

' / am an ambassador for Christ ! * 



D 



VI. 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 




!IS manse having become uninhabitable, 
he had been living for some time at 
Fincraigs, a healthy, breezy place on 
the other side of the hill from Kilmany, on the 
high ground overlooking the Tay. Jane was 
his ever-delightful housekeeper; but Jane was 
human, and there was a certain young Mr. 
Morton, a rising agriculturist of the neighbour- 
hood, coming about the house more frequently 
than could be explained on the ground of mere 
common civility. He was very likely, some of 
these days, to carry away this one ewe lamb. 
The Anster folks also were trying, by every 
means in their power, to propel Thomas in the 
direction of matrimony. He was over thirty, 
and permanently settled ; he was engrossed with 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 51 

study and work; he was absent, careless, and 
unfit to manage a house ; he might soon lose 
Jane, and be left utterly helpless. But in vain 
is the snare laid in the sight of any bird ; he 
saw their game, and was quietly resolved to 
disappoint them ; and, besides, he resented their 
low opinion of his capacity for house manage- 
ment. Then, again, though very amiable in his 
own way, he disliked control ; he would sit free 
at his own fireside ; he vowed himself a con- 
firmed bachelor. ' They wish me to marry/ he 
growls in his Journal of June 181 1. * It is not 
their own accommodation they want ; it is their 
idea of my incapacity for housekeeping that 
prompts their arrangements. I do not feel this 
incapacity ; and, upon the principle of consulting 
my own soul in every good work, should I not 
come to a frank explanation, if ever any new 
arrangement be proposed to me ? Let me stick 
by Jane ; and in every other way but in that of 
bettering myself with a constant housekeeper ' — 
^constant housekeeper' — misogamist that thou 
art, is that the name to give to a wife ?) — ' let 
me spare no manifestation of friendship and 
regard for my other relations. If the offensive 



52 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

peculiarities of others be so apt to distress me, 
why hazard my future tranquillity upon a wife?' 
His determination is taken — bachelorism and 
tranquillity ! 

So during these years, amid all his internal 
conflicts, and his incessant labours as student 
and pastor, he has his comforts too, and his 
relaxations, and the freedom of single-blessed- 
ness. Old John Bonthron keeps dropping in 
upon him, with his familiarities and garrulities. 
His stock of patience, sometimes easily ex- 
hausted, is put to severe trials by his younger 
brother Sandy, who laughs at old John, and is 
guilty of the various other provocations of youth ; 
but how he watches like a nurse, and weeps in 
secret like a mother, when Sandy fall? into sick- 
ness, and reminds him of so many brothers and 
sisters cut off in their prime! Then he roves 
about amongst his acquaintances ; makes starts 
to Dundee, to St. Andrews, to Edinburgh ; and 
his own hospitality, on a small income too, is 
inexhaustible as the fabled horn of plenty. His 
heritors (the landowners of his parish), who are 
proud of their minister, have accorded him a 
new manse, and left the plan of it very much to 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 53 

■ 1 • 11 ■■■■■■ 

his own discretion ; so here is a field for his 
science, taste, and activity. He selected a better 
situation than the old manse ; superintended the 
building; introduced gas tubes for the future 
lighting of the house, the stumps of which are 
still preserved in the ceiling as a memorial of 
his prescience. He planted belts of trees ; and 
laid out his garden in geometric beds, with the 
regular series of botanical genera and species. 

On the 22d of November 18 10, he enters his 
new domains in triumph. 

In January 18 12, young Morton, now settled 
in Somersetshire, comes and carries away the 
sweetest ornament of his new manse, his sister 
Jane. Entry in his Journal : — 'Jan. 23. — I took 
a hurried adieu of my dear Jane, whose depar- 
ture from Kilmany threw me into repeated fits 
of tenderness.' But these fits of tenderness do 
not melt the hard clay of his bachelorism ; they 
only confirm him the more in ' my determina- 
tion not to marry. . . I never intended to save 
money ; and with my income as it is, I shall be 
able to live easily, indulge in a good many 
literary expenses, and command an occasional 
jaunt to London.' 



54 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

As you enter the parish of Kilmany from the 
west, under the sentinel's eye of the lordly 
Norman Law, you are suddenly charmed by the 
sight of a little snug mansion, shining white on 
the hill-side to the left, from amidst a rich em- 
bowering grove. It seems to smile welcome to 
the traveller as he enters the vale. This is Star- 
bank ; and was occupied in these days by Mr. 
Simson, I know not of what calling, but I sup- 
pose farmer or proprietor. He had at this time 
a niece living with him, Grace Pratt, daughter, 
we are told, ' of Captain Pratt of the 1st Royal 
Veteran Battalion.' Our confirmed bachelor 
was in the habit of visiting Starbank as he 
visited other places ; and he saw Grace Pratt — 
but not as he saw other faces. In the month of 
June — five months after his sister Jane had left 
him — the confirmed bachelor is found thus writ- 
ing in his Journal : — ' O my God, pour Thy best 
blessings on Grace! Give her ardent and de- 
cided Christianity. May she be the blessing 
and the joy of all around her. May her light 
shine while she lives ; and when she dies, may 
it prove to be a mere step, a transition in her 
march to a joyful eternity ! ' 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 55 

Most beautifully and piously said ! But, after 
this, who will believe the vows of confirmed 
bachelors ? 

Abundant and glowing testimonies prove that 
he found in matrimony the tranquillity which he 
would have vainly sought in singleness. The 
character of Grace Pratt of Starbank that was, 
Mrs. Chalmers that became, as it shone in its 
maturity, has been thus praised by a most 
praiseworthy man, Dr. Smyth, assistant to 
Chalmers in Glasgow, who lived for some time 
in the family, and who was finally one of the 
most revered of the Free Church ministers of 
that city : — 

* Possessed of talents decidedly superior, of 
large and varied information, of warm-hearted 
affections, and of what is infinitely better, en- 
lightened and decided piety, Mrs. Chalmers 
commanded the esteem and the confidence of 
her family and her friends. Her judgment was 
calm, sound, and comprehensive. She possessed 
a tact and a delicacy of perception which fitted 
her for being a wise and faithful counsellor. . . 
Her discernment of character was remarkable. 
It seemed as if by intuition she could at once 



56 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

discriminate between the true and the false- 
hearted, and yet there was the charity that 
hopeth all things. As a wife, a mother, a 
mistress, a friend, a disciple of Him who was 
meek and lowly in spirit, few are better entitled 
to affection's warmest tribute.' 

Now congenially fixed in his domestic rela- 
tions, and deepening every day in his own expe- 
rience of the Christian life, he consecrated him- 
self with a devotion unknown and unfelt before 
to fulfil the whole duties of his ministry as an 
ambassador for Christ He noway slackened — 
indeed he was more diligent than ever — in the 
discharge of the more secular duties of his office, 
such as the oversight of the education, and the 
management of the poor of his parish ; but the 
spiritual duties, once so lightly regarded, now 
rose in his estimation to a magnitude and 
grandeur almost overwhelming. He trembled 
at the accountability of his stewardship. With 
what frequency, with what affectionateness, both 
as a friend and a pastor, did he visit amongst 
the families, and examine them in their know- 
ledge of religion, and instruct them in righteous- 
ness, and endeavour to lead the way by an 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. $7 

example of devoutness, kindness, and sincerity ! 
How constant was he, and how welcome was 
he, at the bed of sickness and impending death ; 
how plain-dealing yet gentle in his admonitions ; 
how rich in consolation ; how peculiarly happy 
in his explanations, especially to the humble 
and benighted ! He had quite a special talent 
in knowing the significance of old Scottish words 
and phrases ; and often, in his visitations to the 
sick and dying, he made use of them in such 
a way as threw a sudden flash of brightness 
into minds too dark and feeble to apprehend 
even the commonest terms of theology. The 
Scotch word ' to lippen/ for instance, has a fine 
and exquisite meaning amongst the common 
people. 'To lippen tq a person/ is to trust 
him from full confidence both in his truth and 
his power and his love. Chalmers was one day 
urging an old woman who was on her deathbed, 
and was anxious but ignorant, 'to believe on 
the Lord Jesus Christ/ when she interrupted him, 

1 Believe, believe ! but what is it to believe t 9 

« 

' Lippen to Him /' said Chalmers. 

'Lippen to Him I ay, I understand that' 

He was now also the most active promoter 



58 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

of Bible and Missionary Societies ; and he was 
political economist enough to mark and store 
up amongst his data for future use the astonish- 
ing productiveness of penny-a-week subscriptions, 
— that ' accumulation of littles/ as he came to 
call it, which, fruitful as the idea of the Penny 
Post, was to be the secret of much of his 
future finance. For some years he had been 
as close and laborious a student of theology as 
he used to be of mathematics, and with more 
abundant fruit; for he published at this time 
(1814), first in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, 
then as a separate work, his Evidences of the 
Christian Religion. 

But, as ambassador for Christ, his main voca- 
tion was to preach the, gospel. Instead of the 
running scrawl of Saturday night, he bestowed 
immense pains on the composition of his ser- 
mons. They were the diplomatic notes in his 
embassy, and could not be too carefully thought 
out, too persuasively expressed His personal 
experience for the three past years, apart from 
his theological reading, supplied him with in- 
exhaustible store of thought, of guidance for 
others ; and out of the fulness of his own heart, 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 59 

rather than from books and systems, he poured 
forth upon his congregation an impetuous but 
pure and transparent river of vital Christian 
truth. The intensity of the man fired up his 
whole being, body as well as mind. Though 
his delivery became less spasmodic, less reck- 
less, it lost nothing of its thundering force ; 
only it was more solemn, more alarming, more 
imploring; the eye which one moment darted 
the fire of reproof, was bathed the next moment 
in the tears of pity and of love. Every limb, 
every muscle of the body, as well as every faculty 
of the mind, were pressed into the service of 
his Master ; and such at times was the tremen- 
dousness of his discourses, that he hurled his 
own flaming convictions as by force into the 
souls of his hearers. 

On the urgency of friends and admirers, he 
had frequently attempted to preach extempore. 
' If that man/ said Andrew Fuller, the famous 
Baptist minister and theologian, who had been 
down on a missionary tour in Scotland, and had 
heard Chalmers preach, — 'If that man would 
but throw away his papers in the pulpit, he 
might be king of Scotland.' He threw away 



60 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

his papers ; he sedulously tried to extemporize ; 
but his efforts ended in total failure. It was 
not for want of nerve, for, as we have seen, he 
was a strong, sturdy, courageous man, of indo- 
mitable resolution. It was not lack of material, 
for in that he superabounded ; it was not from 
treacherousness of memory, for that was most 
retentive and methodical. It was from no want 
of vivacity and spirit, for he had these in excess. 
Instead of any want, it was from intellectual 
plethora. His mind was so full of his subject, 
yet so mathematically anxious that every pre- 
mise should be understood, every proof followed, 
that, without the confining mould of a written 
composition, he could not restrain and regulate 
his ideas ; he could not keep them in shape and 
fluxion ; and when time was up, he found him- 
self only in the middle of some preliminary 
explanation. . He used often to remark, ' that in 
one quality he seemed to resemble Rousseau, 

a 

who said of himself, that he was slow but ardent! 
The slowness and the ardour were equally un- 
favourable to extempore preaching. He some- 
times compared himself to a bottle full of liquid ; 
when suddenly turned up, it cannot flow from 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 61 

its very fulness, not a drop comes out at first, 
and for a while only bursts and splutters. He 
deliberately gave up the attempt to preach 
extempore, and commonly adhered closely to 
his manuscript. But, on the other hand, he 
composed rapidly, and with a constant view to 
an audience, so that his compositions had all 
the animation of extempore ; and then, from 
his intensity, and from practice, his reading 
far transcended any other man's delivery in 
fervour and in force. The manuscript was never 
thought of, as people thrilled under the blaze 
of that face, and the lightning sweep of that 
arm. As the old woman said of him, 'Ah, it's 
fell reading, yon /' He did not throw away his 
papers in the pulpit, and yet he was king of 
Scotland. So impossible is it to calculate from 
ordinary rules, when you have to deal with a 
man of original power. 

The little sequestered kirk of Kilmany — ' the 
church of the valley ' — once so thinly attended, 
and the few so careless, was now crowded in 
every corner, even the standing space, not by 
the parish folk only, but by strangers from afar, 
from Dundee, from Edinburgh ; all were watch- 



62 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

ing with interest, some with awe, this strange 
sight — this man, with such marvellous power, 
preaching the very doctrines of the gospel 
which so lately he had disbelieved and reviled. 
No one looking at him there, hearing him there, 
in that dingy old pulpit of Kilmany, but felt 
that he was in training to break up the com- 
monplace and apathy of Scotland, and to agitate 
her whole frame with new impulses and new 
ideas. 

It is difficult for us, at this distance of time, 
and in the altered condition of things, fully to 
realize the sensation which was created through- 
out Scotland by the sudden and extraordinary 
prominence attained by the minister of Kil- 
many — his sudden conversion from a vague 
naturalism to the most advanced belief in the 
doctrines of the gospel, and his transcendent 
powers as a preacher. Every one at all inti- 
mate with the inner life, the spiritual history 
of Scotland, and who has any even philosophic 
sympathy with such things, will admit that a 
new era commenced, in national opinion and 
action, about this year 1814. The only thing in 
our own time that bears analogy to it, though 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 63 

■ 1 

totally different in type, was the outburst of 
English Tractarianism in 1834. 

By the end of the eighteenth century, from 
various operating causes, — such as, the reimposi- 
tion of patronage, the secularism of the clergy, 
the secessions of the stricter men, the scepticism 
of Hume, the leaven of high Tory politics, — the 
Church of Scotland had got stranded, high 
and dry, on that sandbank called Moderatism. 
Now Moderatism had not one particle of any- 
thing vital ; was neither true Christian nor good 
pagan ; had neither the unction of Knox, nor 
the yearning desire for truth and goodness of 
an Epictetus or a Cicero. It was the wish-wash 
of a contemptible clergy, drawn chiefly from 
poor relations, family tutors, and the stupidest 
sons of the corruptest Scottish voters. The 
people— counting many of the sounder gentry, 
the farmers and merchants, as well as the pea- 
santry — had a keen relish for what they called, 
in opposition to Moderatism, the gospel ; but, 
in this sense, they could hardly find the gospel 
within the pale of the Established Church. 
Still, as in the worst days of the Papacy, so in 
the Church of Scotland, there had been a thin 



64 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



line of confessors all through the successive 
generations. We may mention, amongst others, 
the saintly Thomas Boston, the grave and 
thoughtful John Erskine, the experienced and 
commanding Sir Harry Moncreiff ; and lastly, 
from about the year 1810, the redoubted Andrew 
Thomson, lion in look and soul, always armed, 
always ready for combat, always victorious, only 
requiring a wider platform and wilder times to 
prove himself the genuine successor of Knox. 
This valiant line of confessors only wanted a 
king-man, one of those who, in their time, stamp 
a people into the likeness of their own image, 
and who bring what had hitherto been a 
struggle, into completion and unity. That 
consummation arrived in Chalmers. Thence- 
forth the Church of Scotland was raised from 
the state of senility into which it had fallen; 
and was again acknowledged by its people, and 
by Christendom, as a gospel Church, that is, a 
Church both teaching the peculiar doctrines, and 
endeavouring to realize the spirit and fruits of a 
living Christianity. 

Andrew Thomson, — generous as fierce, with 
the nobleness of John the Baptist, who pro- 



LAST YEARS IN KILMANY. 65 

claimed of the greater than himself, ' He must 
increase, but I must decrease,' — said to one of 
his intimate friends, ' Go to such a church in 
Edinburgh on Sabbath : Chalmers of Kilmany 
is to preach. Come and tell me what you 
think of him, for I cannot go. From all I hear, 
I believe that man is to be the star of the first 
magnitude in Scotland !' 



'(S^CSii 


xQfc 


~> ^-^ A 


i ^*s 







VII. 



GLASGOW AND CHALMERS. 




jLASGOW, even then the most active, 
wealthy, and prosperous city in Scot- 
land, not to be surpassed even in 
England, which means the world, was now also 
quickening with a higher order of ambition, 
and was drawing to herself all the rising men 
that could be found, as professors and clergy- 
men. No sooner had she heard of the fame of 
Thomas Chalmers than she called him to her 
Tron Church, in the very heart of her densest 
population ; and from thenceforth she made 
him her own. Although he was only eight 
years in Glasgow, and was afterwards twenty 
years in Edinburgh, his name always calls up 
the recollection, not of the latter, but of the 
former city. The names of Chalmers and of 

66 



GLASGOW AND CHALMERS. 67 

Glasgow are entwined, as Ambrose with Milan, 
Savonarola with Florence, Knox with Edin- 
burgh, Hall with Leicester, Lacordaire with 
Paris. He will ever be — Chalmers of Glasgow / 
From a hamlet attached to a cathedral on the 
bend of the Clyde towards the sea, the city of 
St. Mungo had grown up into the Tyre of Scot- 
land; and from a population of 13,000 at the 
Union, had multiplied by the time Chalmers 
came to it to a population of more than 
100,000. From about the middle of the 
eighteenth century she rose to be queen of 
commerce and manufactures. Her merchants 
used to have the whole British trade with the 
slave states of America, and with the slave- 
masters of the West Indies. That was the 
time of the Virginians, who strutted about 
on their own side of the Trongate, apart from 
vulgar mortals, in scarlet and gold cloaks, 
rich velvet under-dress, cocked hats, tasselled 
canes, and silver buckles at knee and instep. 
Afterwards, when slavery, like all tyranny, found 
'it had a lith in its neck/ the busy, money- 
making people turned to more innocent means 
of wealth — to cotton, and iron, and ship- 



68 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

building, and shipping, with steam-mills and 
steam-furnaces, and all the other coining-pots 
of fortune. Like other cities of the same type, 
Mammon was the universal idol, and the Ex- 
change was the new cathedral 

The population naturally ranged itself into 
four classes. There was an inner circle of 
established families, the debris of the Vir- 
ginians; then there was a swarm of the new- 
rich, curling up like the smoke of their own 
chimneys; there was a small lettered class, 
professors and professionals, keeping separate 
from the dough around them, and diffusing 
little of their leaven into the lump; and at 
bottom was the usual great dense heap of 
human machines doing the servile work for the 
knowing and bustling ones above them. My 
authorities report as follows concerning Glas- 
gow at that time. Infidelity — the nihilism of 
the Hume school — prevailed largely amongst 
the upper families, with the dissoluteness of 
conduct which springs from idleness, good 
cheer, a full purse, the wish to be thought 
fashionable, and the licence allowed to liber- 
tines if only they be rich. Then, again, the 



GLASGOW AND CHALMERS. 69 



herd of Church-and-king burgesses of that 
period, wide-awake in pounds, shillings, and 
pence, were, as regards religion, drenched in 
the dead sleep of Moderatism. The popular 
masses, whether toilers or vagabonds, were in 
a fearful proportion grovelling away in long- 
settled squalor and drunkenness, discord and 
misery, in the slough of home-heathenism. 

. That was the dark side of the picture. But 
there was also a bright side, otherwise the nobler 
souls of the world would wither on the stalk and 
die out in despair. 

The prevailing state of comfort and wealth 
had imparted to the general inhabitants a fine 
gloss of sociality, — the hospitality of Glasgow 
was proverbial. The new-rich, if they had little 
artificial culture, were shrewd, judicious, and en- 
terprising, large givers from their large receipts ; 
and being loaded with no traditional rubbish, 
they were singularly open to new ideas, and to 
impressions from some new master-mind. There 
was little distinction of rank amongst them, 
except with the few Virginians and literati. 
The rich men had become rich side by side, and 
continued to be boon companions ; and as they 



70 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

had all risen from the ranks, they had still 
their relatives and their former friends and 
acquaintances in the humbler class, whom they 
had not learned to despise. The masters still, 
very commonly, lived in the same quarters with 
the men, not on Loch Long and Loch Lomond. 
The families, therefore, had not sunk out of 
view of one another. The master knew most of 
his men personally; the mistress would some- 
times visit the wives, at least in cases of sickness 
or trouble, or even as her early acquaintances ; 
the children went to the same school and 
church, played together on Glasgow Green, 
and chummed in their Saturday rambles to 
the woods of Kelvin, or the banks of Bothwell. 
Pleasanter, I should say, than modern pride 
and desolation, when the workmen are total 
strangers, and those stiff county people won't 
condescend to exchange visits! The working 
class, less contaminated than now with Irish 
and foreign admixture, had the sound Scottish 
education; and multitudes of them, amid all the 
town temptations, preserved their intelligence 
and integrity, their Scottish self-respect and 
decency and piety. Glasgow never had the 



GLASGOW AND CHALMERS. 71 



hardness common in manufacturing towns. It 
had always a breath of the country air, a touch 
of the genial primitive manners. For one thing, 
there was a large infusion of the Celtic 
element in which Matthew Arnold delights, 
— the element of instinctive poetry and sensi- 
bility, enthusiasm and devotion. Glasgow must 
still have held much of the ancient British 
blood of Strath-Clyde ; and the ancient blood 
was reinvigorated with Gaels from Cantyre 
and Lorn and the Hebrides, and no less with 
'wild Scots' from Galloway. As the worthy 
Gallowegian boasted, when some one remarked 
how many Stranraer people were in Glasgow: 
' Ou ay ! ye see Glasgow was made for the 
Stranraer folk the same as Liverpool for the 
folk o' Dumfries.' The people, though rich 
and money-loving, were neither rude, nor 
sordid, nor repulsive. On the contrary, they 
were free with their money, generous, straight- 
forward, and manly, public-spirited, ready with 
time and means for any good cause. They 
were quite the people, in short, to yield them- 
selves up to the fascination of Chalmers, and 
give him for leverage, in all his sacred and 



72 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

philanthropic enterprises, the whole strength 
and nobleness of their city. 

He was elected minister of the Tron on 
the 25th of November 1814, but not formally 
admitted till the month of July 1815. Though 
'his heart was wedded to the hills of Kilmany/ 
as he mournfully said on leaving ; yet he could 
not but feel, and did feel, that he now required 
the vantage-ground of a great city, to enable him 
to realize those schemes of national revival and 
usefulness which had long been brooding in his 
mind. 





VIII. 



THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 




!E carried with him from Kilmany to 
Glasgow not only the responsibilities 
of a divine embassy to the souls of 
individuals, he also carried certain ideals having 
reference to the welfare of men viewed col- 
lectively as a nation. It was in the develop- 
ment of these ideals that his li(e rose to a 
public importance — from that of ftierely a great 
preacher to that of a great man. These ideals 
were — the full realization of the parochial 
system ; the inherent self-governing power of 
the Church ; the extinction of pauperism, com- 
bined with the general elevation of the working 
class. 

73 



74 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Parochial System. 
The parish (meaning more particularly at 
present the rural parish as it existed say in 
1 8 14), by the law and custom of Scotland, was 
a very peculiar and independently organized 
community. It may be of various dimensions, 
but we shall suppose it of such moderate size 
that one may easily walk or ride to any part of 
it, and visit numerous families, in the course of a 
single day. There may be only a few hundred 
inhabitants, but we shall suppose a thousand. 
Generally there is one great landowner, — the 
ancestral magnate of the district, — with a num- 
ber of other proprietors, small, but of good old 
family. Then there are the farmers great and 
small, a few shopkeepers and tradesmen, less or 
more substantial, with the mass of handicrafts- 
men and ploughmen and labourers, and always 
some nameless residuum — imbecile, vagrant, or 
ne'er-do-weel. But the prominent features, the 
characteristic symbols of the Scottish parish, 
are — ih^ parish church, standing in some cen- 
tral spot for the Sabbath worship of the inha- 
bitants, with the pleasant manse of the minister ; 
and generally, at no great distance, the parish 



THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 7S 

school, for the education of the young of both 
sexes and of all the families in the parish, with 
the decent though humble abode of the dominie. 
The heart of the parish beats there, — in that 
church and that schoolhouse, with the dwellings 
of the minister and schoolmaster. The minister 
has his kirk-session, — his eight or ten of the 
gravest and most influential men of the parish, 
— who assist him with their advice, and help 
him in carrying out the plans of his pastorate, 
whether bearing upon the moral and religious 
superintendence of the parishioners, or upon the 
business of the various ecclesiastical courts, the 
presbyteries and synods and assemblies. Besides 
the religious instruction and superintendence, the 
minister with his session have practically the 
whole other management of the parish, except 
what can only be exercised by the higher autho- 
rities or the civil tribunals; they have, for instance, 
practically at least, the oversight of the school- 
master, the care and examination of the scholars, 
and the regulation and relief of the poor. 

Chalmers, therefore, from his pastorate in 
Kilmany, had the image thoroughly imprinted 
on his mind of the Scottish parish, — the church 



76 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

with its manse, the school and schoolhouse, the 
encircling homesteads and villages of the par- 
ishioners; every individual personally known 
and frequently visited ; and amongst them the 
poor and distressed, whose individual cases must 
be considered, with mercy indeed, but also with 
discrimination and firmness. 

'This is the home-walk/ — so he records the 
labours and delights of his own experience, — 
' in which is earned, if not a proud, at least a 
peaceful popularity, the popularity of the heart, 
— the greetings of men who, touched even by the 
cheapest and easiest services of kindness, have 
nothing to give but their wishes of kindness 
back again ; but in giving these, have crowned 
such pious attentions with the only popularity 
that is worth the aspiring after — the popularity 
that is won in the bosom of families and at the 
side of death-beds/ 

Self -governing power of the Church. 
Along with the increasing strength of his evan- 
gelical views, and the increasing devotion to his 
parochial duties, there grew up a deeper and 
deeper feeling of the spirituality and indepen- 



THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 77 

dence of the Church — of the Church of Christ 
as an idea, of the Church of Scotland as an 
institution. His idea of the Christian Church 
generally, was that of a body holding its consti- 
tution solely from its Founder through His word ; 
and therefore, within its religious province, sub- 
ject alone to His authority as declared in His 
word, and subject to no other control. Then, 
as an institution, the Church of Scotland, he 
contended, had always expressly and emphati- 
cally avowed this to be its constitution ; and 
the State, consequently, in establishing it, had 
recognised this principle as a condition of the 
establishment 

These sentiments were most pointedly elicited 
by what is called Feme's case in the General 
Assembly of 1 8 14, whilst he was yet minister of 
Kilmany, and were republished in his Christian 
and Civic Economy of Large Towns, in the 
early years of his Glasgow ministry. So un- 
founded is the insinuation which some have 
made, that he only clutched at these wild 
notions about 1840, to justify his rebellion at 
the time of the Disruption. Thirty years be- 
fore the Disruption he anticipated the whole 



78 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

controversy, laid deep the principle of the 
Church's independence in things pertaining to 
religion, and grappled inch by inch with the 
very arguments on which Lord Cottenham and 
Lord Brougham in 1839 confirmed the famous 
Auchterarder case, and at the same time sapped 
the foundations of all the Established Churches 
in the kingdom. 

In the course of the discussions in 18 14, 
Chalmers in the broadest manner asserted the 
independence of the Church as to the ordination 
of its ministers. 

4 The absolute right of patrons is altogether 
a visionary principle. . . . The man who comes 
to our bar with a presentation to a living, has 
acquired no absolute right of property till he 
has obtained our consent to his induction. A 
presentation carries along with it no absolute 
right of property. It is only a right of pro- 
perty with submission to the judgment of the 
Church. . . . This subordinates the right of the 
patron to that high function of the Church, by 
which it sits in authority over every question 
involving in it the interests of religion.' 

And then, on the very point which afterwards 



THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 79 

determined the judgment of the House of 
Lords : — 

'For the purpose of limiting the Church in 
the exercise of this right, it has been contended 
that her judgment on the fitness of the presentee 
is restricted to the mere question of his moral and 
literary qualifications. . . . The Church is not 
at all limited to particular grounds. . . . She 
can set aside any presentee, and that generally 
on the principle that it is not for the cause of 
edification that his presentation should be sus- 
tained. ... They may put their conclusive veto 
on any presentation for any reason, or if they 
choose, for no reason at all. Even though there 
should be manifest injustice in their decision, 
there exists not, without the limits of the 
Church, any one legal or constitutional provi- 
sion against such a possibility. The only secu- 
rity, in fact, is that a Church so constituted as 
ours will not be unjust* 

He valued an Established Church, not as a 
priest but as a philanthropist, — not for the ag- 
grandisement of an order, but for the instruction, 
improvement, and consolation of the people. 
If it was to be a clean, efficient instrument, it 



80 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

must be independent of the soiling fingers of 
party governments, and party politics, and in- 
terested dealers in patronage. To be of any 
use, the Church must be the voice of Heaven to 
man, as nearly as anything human can be ; that 
is, an institution that gives pure and undictated 
expression to the law of God, to which both 
rulers and ruled should submit themselves. 
But if the Church is manipulated by the State, 
— that is, by the party in power for the time, — 
of what real honest use or good can it be to 
the people ? Is it anything but another bureau, 
like the Police or the Home Office, where the 
religious business is transacted by direction of 
the Government ? If religion is to be of any 
use, — if the whole be not a political juggle, — 
then the State must not muddle the water or 
throw mixtures of their own into the stream, so 
that the people shall only drink a government 
compound ; the people must be left to draw the 
water fresh and pure as it wells out of the 
fountainhead. Erastianism destroys the Church 
which it handles : it is no more a Church, but 
an office for the sale of a political liquid called 
Religion. 



THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 81 

Pauperism. 

To Pauperism he had very early directed his 
attention. We have seen that Political Eco- 
nomy was one of his earliest studies. It was a 
study most congenial at once to his warm feeling 
of interest in all that related to humanity, and to 
his habits of inductive reasoning. None of its dis- 
cussions more deeply interested his benevolence 
and curiosity than the condition of the indigent 
poor, and the means of ameliorating that condi- 
tion. We find him collecting materials for this 
study when he resided in the neighbourhood 
of Hawick in 1802, afterwards in Kilmany, and 
by correspondence from 18 14 downwards with 
his brother-in-law Mr. Morton, residing in Som- 
ersetshire, where the English poor laws were 
riding rampant These, with other and con- 
tinual observations, confirmed his hostility to 
compulsory assessment for the relief of pauper- 
ism, and riveted his trust in the adequacy of 
spontaneous benevolence, if left free and un- 
touched. As he recorded in 18 14, — ' It is quite 
vain to think that positive relief will ever do 
away the wretchedness of poverty. Carry the 



82 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

relief beyond a certain limit, and you foster the 
diseased principle which gives birth to poverty. 
. . . .. The remedy against the extension of 
pauperism does not lie in the liberalities of the 
rich, it lies in the hearts and habits of the poor. 
Plant in their bosoms a principle of indepen- 
dence ; give a high tone of delicacy to* their 
characters ; teach them to recoil from pauper- 
ism as a degradation.' 

He draws a dark and hideous picture of 
what pauperism must become, if allowed to eat 
away into the entrails of the nation, and if 
merely dealt with in some of its symptoms, 
and not boldly assailed at the roots. The 
picture has become a reality, under which both 
England and Scotland are now almost helplessly 
shuddering. 

'We hold pauperism to be a . . . deadly 
antagonist to the morality of a nation. ... It 
effecteth its work of destruction upon the charac- 
ter of man more by sap than by storm. The 
family virtues have not been swept away 
by it with the violence of an inundation, but 
they have drooped and languished, and at the 
end of a few generations, are now ready to 






THE IDEALS OF HIS LIFE. 83 

expire. The mildew which it has sprinkled 
over the face of the community has fallen in 
small and successive quantities from its hand ; 
and it is only by an addition made every year 
to this deleterious blight that the evil at length 
is consummated. Like the malaria in Italy, 
it has now attained a progress and a virulency 
which begin to be contemplated with the awe 
of some great approaching desolation ; and a 
sense of helplessness mingles with the terror 
which is inspired by the forebodings of a mighty 
disaster, that has been gathering along the lapse 
of time into more distinct shape and more ap- 
palling magnitude.' 




FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 




[IS first sermon in Glasgow was in aid 
of the Society for the Sons of the 
Clergy, and was preached on a week- 
day, the 30th of March 1815 — four months 
before his formal admission as minister of the 
Tron. As was to be expected, the curiosity to 
hear him was extreme ; and the teeming crowds 
in attendance was the beginning of those enor- 
mous and rapt assemblages that ever afterwards 
hung upon his ministrations. He was yet, 
however, untried in the great world, and 
curiosity was mingled with doubt Would he 
unquestionably succeed, or would he egregiously 
fail ? It was felt there was no middle fate for 
him ; mediocrity and Chalmers could not go 

ogcthcr; there lay before him, either the 

84 



FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 85 



immediate oblivion of the sky-rocket, or the 
glory of the first pulpit orator of his age. 

Amongst those squeezed into the crowd that 
day was a young Oxford student, home to his 
native Lanarkshire — John Gibson Lockhart — 
the pink of the most fastidious university 
culture, brilliant and quizzical, too knowing 
to be carried away by any trickery or man- 
nerism, with more of the critical than of the 
admiring in his mood, and little susceptible 
of the emotions of religion. Curiosity had 
brought Lockhart thither; also the accident 
that he had heard the preacher's Evidences of 
Christianity spoken of with applause even in 
the superfine class-rooms of Oxford. Borrow- 
ing the aid of his young, keenly discerning 
eyes, and those of the amiable, shrewd, and 
more sympathetic Dean Ramsay, who, either 
then or afterwards, heard the same sermon, 
aided with some recollections of our own of 
what he was in his later days, we can transport 
ourselves with no great effort of the imagination 
back to the scene, and renew all the varied and 
vivid experiences of that audience. 

The light on the pulpit is dim as the preacher 



86 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

enters ; and to one who sees him for the first 
time, and has an image in his mind of some 
dignified and commanding orator, there must 
be a shock of disappointment. A figure 
middle-sized, manly and square-built, but with 
something strange and uncouth, — a manner 
abrupt and confused, sometimes like embar- 
rassment, sometimes like irreverence, — a face 
heavy and deadly pale, with features strongly 
marked, almost to coarseness : can this be the 
Chalmers whose lips drop manna, whose arm 
summons forth, or allays, the most vehement 
passions of man ? He comes forward and reads 
out the psalm, the first act of Scottish worship, 
but with cracked and untuneable voice, strained, 
yet scarcely audible, and with a slumberous 
countenance which emits no gleam of radiance 
or of feeling. The light, however, is now 
increasing, and dissipates the obscurity which 
hung about the pulpit The devotional exer- 
cises are touching his soul and animating his 
look : long before the sermon is commenced we 
have traced, though in forms different from our 
preconceptions, the marks of correspondence 
which generally exist between a grand mind 



FIRST SERMON IN GLASGO JV. 87 

and the bodily organization through which it 
manifests itself. The head, with its crisp dark 
locks, is a mighty mass, yet nobly proportioned ; 
the forehead of unusual breadth and knotted 
firmness, resembling that of the great mathe- 
maticians, but rising to an elevation and a 
symmetry at the temples, which remind us of 
the poet, and of the devout and lofty-minded 
enthusiast. The eyes, lack-lustre at first, dull 
of expression, pressed down by long eyelids, 
have a mystic dreaminess; or again, even in 
repose, kindle to a lightning flash, which fore- 
tokens the inward-gathering blaze of thought, 
of fancy, and of high purposes. The under part 
of the face, struggling curiously between heavi- 
ness of form and ever-varying quickness of 
expression, balances, by its practical-looking 
qualities, the ideality and abstraction which 
mark the upper part The broad square 
cheeks, — the firm-set, deep-marked lip, — the 
strong jaw and chin, — the play both of humour 
and of a certain finesse, a knowingness not to 
be done, about the, corners of the mouth, — give 
an impress of sturdy sense, of keen observa- 
tion, of a certain plain and unceremonious 



88 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

way of treating things, of a turn for occasional 
boisterous merriment, and joyous unrestrained 
laughter, of patient industry, and an altogether 
unconquerable resolution ; whilst again, the meek 
downcast look that so habitually comes over the 
eye, and the air of pensiveness that so often 
shades the whole aspect, disclose the depth of 
pity, of sympathy, of love for man, which work 
evermore at the inmost core of his heart 

But our study of the outer man is arrested : 
he rises and announces his text: 'Remember 
the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It 
is more blessed to give than to receive/ . 

Yet the same dulness, almost stolidity of 
demeanour, has again settled down upon him ; 
he looks awkward and constrained ; the same 
harsh croaking tone, the same ungainly manner, 
and that broad Fife tongue. How can this 
man be an orator? See how he bends over 
the paper, follows it with his finger, reads every 
word from it like a schoolboy ! Where can be 
the freedom of voice and action, the sudden 
electrifying burst, the eye lighted up by the 
brightening eyes of his hearers, the higher 
enthusiasm inspired into himself by the enthu- 



FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 89 

siasm with which he is inspiring others ? Hear 
— but you can hardly hear — his ragged, dis- 
jointed sentences, as to the many sayings of 
our Lord which must have floated about 
amongst the early disciples, one of which is 
preserved in the text : * It is more blessed to 
give than to receive.' He speaks with an 
expression almost of pain, as if his chest were 
weak; his motions indicate feeble perplexity; 
instead of a striking exordium, there is triteness 
and platitude. 

He now begins to describe the blessedness 
of the giver. His first reason is, that the giver 
is forming himself after the image of God, 
which, says the preacher, l is the great purpose 
of the dispensation we sit under/ His words 
now become more emphatic, his manner more 
steady and impressive. The overflowing good- 
ness of God takes hold of his imagination as if 
by a sudden spell. 

'A mighty tide of communication from God 
to His creatures has been kept up incessantly 
from the first hour of creation. It flows with- 
out intermission. It spreads over the whole 
extent of the universe He has formed It 



90 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

carries light and sustenance and enjoyment 
through the wide dominions of nature and of 
providence. It reaches to the very humblest 
individual among His children. There is not 
one shred or fragment in the awful immensity 
of His works which is overlooked by Him/ 

'Nor must we think, with the mere natu- 
ralist,' — he goes on to argue, — 'that our God 
is without any emotion in His ineffable being, 
without anything analogous to human feeling ; 
that He gives from the mere overflow of an 
infinite fulness, but with an affection untouched. 

' This, I think, is not the lesson of the Bible. 
He who hath seen the Father, and is alone 
competent to declare Him, gives me a some- 
what different view of what I venture to call 
the constitution of the Deity . . . When we are 
told that " God so loved the world as to send 
His only begotten Son into it, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life," what is the meaning of the 
emphatic sot* The preacher answers with a 
fervour which is now communicating its glow 
to every bosom : 

' It means nothing at all, if God, in the act 



FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 91 

of giving up His Son to death, did not make 
the same kind of sacrifice with the parent who, 
amid the agonies of his struggling bosom, sur- 
renders his only child to some call of duty or 
of patriotism. . . . Dismiss then, my brethren, 
all your scholastic conceptions of the Deity, 
and keep by that warm and affecting view of 
Him that we have in the Bible. For if we do 
not, we will lose the impression of many of its 
most moving arguments, and our hearts will 
remain shut against its most powerful and 
pathetic representations of the character of 
God/ 

Slowly is the man becoming manifest — the 
great preacher of his age — one of the most 
prevailing preachers of any age! No more 
constraint now, no more awkwardness, no more 
feebleness of voice and manner: he has the 
mastery of his subject, he has the mastery of 
his audience. The voice, without sweetness or 
melody indeed, has the thrill of the clarion, 
summoning to battle for the right, and against 
all wrong and evil. The eye, which was dull 
and half-closed, is all on fire with intelligence 
and rapture and zeal. Every member of the 



92 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

body is penetrated as with Heaven's message: 
the breast heaves with the tumult of only half- 
uttered thoughts ; the strong arm is uplifted in 
rebuke, or spread out with proffers of mercy ; 
the very feet are heard to thunder, as if stamp- 
ing the solemn truths upon the soul. Reason- 
ing, illustration, appeal, with swift successive 
strokes, carry captive every mind. The foolish 
are illuminated ; the weak are nerved with un- 
known vigour ; even the wise men after the flesh 
lay aside their arrogance, and once more bend 
in devoutness and humility, as when, little chil- 
dren at their earthly mother's knee, they would 
repeat, ' Our Father who art in heaven ! ' 

He pleads, in conclusion, for his orphan clients, 
the sons of those of the clergy who have been 
taken by their Master from the service below 
to the sanctuary above ; whose flocks must now 
pass to new shepherds, and whose once cheer- 
ful manses can no longer be the sheltering fold 
of their children. The breaking up of the manse 
— to himself what a mournful theme ! He still 
bore the wounds of his own removal from the 
manse of Kilmany, with a bitterness almost like 
that of death ; and tenderly, therefore, could he 



FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 93 

sympathize with* those whom the reality of death 
had torn from a home which is generally so 
peaceful, and the peculiar halo of which, once 
broken, no new associations can restore. 

1 The sympathies of a man are ever most alive 
to those distresses which may fall upon him- 
self ; and it is for a minister to feel the deepest 
emotion at the sad picture of a breaking up 
of a minister's family. When the sons and the 
daughters of clergymen are left to go, they 
know not whither, from the peacefulness of 
their father's dwelling, never were poor out- 
casts less prepared by the education and the 
habits of former years for the scowl of an un- 
pitying world ; nor can I figure a drearier or 
more affecting contrast than that which obtains 
between the blissful security of their earlier 
days, and the dark and unshielded condition 
to which the hand of Providence has now 
brought them. . . . When they look abroad 
and survey the innumerable beauties which the 
God of nature has scattered so profusely around 
them ; when they see the sun throwing its un- 
clouded splendour over the whole neighbour- 
hood ; when, on the fair side of the year, they 



94 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

behold the smiling aspect of the country, and 
at every footstep they take, some flower ap- 
pears in its loveliness, or some bird offers its 
melody to delight them ; when they see quiet- 
ness on all the hills, and every field glowing in 
the pride and luxury of vegetation ; when they 
see summer throwing its rich garment over this 
goodly scene of magnificence and glory; and 
think in the bitterness of their souls, that this 
is the last summer which they shall ever witness 
smiling on that scene which all the ties of habit 
and of affection have endeared to them ; when 
this thought, melancholy as it is, is lost and 
overborne in the far darker melancholy of a 
father torn from their embrace, and a helpless 
family left to find their way unprotected and 
alone through the lowering futurity of this 
earthly pilgrimage, — do you wonder* — and as 
he speaks the tears come in rain-drops from 
his eyes, and his voice is broken with frequent 
sobs, whilst something like a wail of pity spreads 
all through the audience — ' do you wonder that 
their feeling hearts should be ready to lose hold 
of the promise — that He, who decks the lily fair 
flowery pride, will guide them in safety 



FIRST SERMON IN GLASGOW. 95 

through the world, and at last raise all who 
believe in Him to the bloom and the vigour of 
immortality? The flowers of the field, they 
toil not, neither do they spin, yet your heavenly 
Father careth for them ; and how much more 
careth He for you, O ye of little faith !' 





X. 



THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 




ROM this time forth Chalmers steadily 
rose in fame, until he took rank 
amongst the foremost pulpit orators 
of his age ; and not unworthy to compare with 
any in any age, of whom history or tradition 
has preserved the memorials. His sudden and 
boundless popularity, however, seemed to origi- 
nate in an accident. 

When he came to Glasgow in 1815, it was 
the custom of the city clergy to preach by 
rotation in the Tron Church every Thursday. 
It came to the turn of Chalmers on the 23d 
of November. Though a week-day, and the 
busiest time of the day, the attendance was 
large ; the admiration for him amongst all 

classes had now risen to a passion. It is 

96 



THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 97 

not likely that any one was aware of the subject 
on which he was to expatiate. His text was 
from the Psalms : ' When I consider Thy 
heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon 
and the stars, which Thou hast ordained ; 
what is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? 
and the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? ' 

This was the first of his Astronomical Sermons. 
It had not then become common to popularize 
science; and any treatises or lectures meant 
for common use were brief, meagre, and unin- 
teresting. Natural science, except for an oc- 
casional simile or illustration, had well-nigh 
been banished from the pulpit But Chalmers 
knew science, and loved it ; and now when he 
was an Evangelical, as much as when he was a 
mere Naturalist, he disdained all bigotry, all 
fanaticism, all disposition to break off the 
connection of Christianity with every subject 
and every interest in the wide universe. What 
then was the delight, when, from his text, he 
poured forth upon the people, with exactitude 
of knowledge, and a gorgeousness of eloquence 
which even he had never before exhibited, all 
the most recent discoveries and the dawning 



98 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

presentiments of the modern Astronomy ! He 
led out his enchanted audience to gaze on ' the 
scenery of a nocturnal sky.' He pointed to the 
brilliant lustre of the planets, their movements 
in the firmament, the proofs that they are 
immensely larger than our earth. ' Why . . . 
suppose that this little spot, — little, at least, in 
the immensity which surrounds it, — should be 
the exclusive abode of life and of intelligence ? 
What reason to think that those mightier 
globes which roll in other parts of creation, 
and which we have discovered to be worlds 
in magnitude, are not also worlds in use and 
in dignity ? ' He plies the various indications 
that these planets must be inhabited 'Shall 
we . . , conceive that silence and solitude reign 
throughout the mighty empire of nature? that 
the greater part of creation is an empty parade ? 
and that not a worshipper of the Divinity is 
to be found through the wide extent of yon 
vast and immeasurable regions ?' But beyond 
the limit of the planetary worlds, are not our 
heavens studded with thousands and millions of 
er luminaries, that are evidently as great and 
ious as the planets, nay, as the sun in our 



A 



THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 99 

own system ? What of these ? ' Are they only 
made to shed a feeble glimmering over this 
little spot in the kingdom of nature? or do 
they serve a purpose worthier of themselves, to 
light up other worlds, and give animation to 
other systems ? ' He can no longer restrain his 
own enthusiasm, and he only gives utterance to 
that of his audience, when he demands : 

'Why resist any longer the grand and inte- 
resting conclusion ? Each of these stars may be 
the token of a system as vast and as splendid a3 
the one which we inhabit Worlds roll in these 
distant regions ; and these worlds must be the 
mansions of life and of intelligence. In yon 
gilded canopy of heaven we see the broad 
aspect of the universe, where each shining 
point presents us with a sun, and each sun with 
a system of worlds ; where the Divinity reigns 
in all the grandeur of His attributes ; where He 
peoples immensity with His wonders, and travels 
in the greatness of His strength through the 
dominions of one vast and unlimited monarchy.' 

But when the eye fails, and when the tele- 
scope fails, he reminds his hearers that space 
does not fail; that immensity stretches forth into 



ioo THOMAS CHALMERS. 

distances where even the most soaring imagina- 
tion cannot, cany us. Again he asks, ' Shall 
we have the boldness to say, that there is 
nothing there? That the wonders of the Al- 
mighty are at an end, because we can no longer 
trace His footsteps ? ' Then he displays to us 
our central sun, apparently moving round some 
greater centre ; he shows us the signs that 
the whole heavenly hosts are revolving in the 
same solemn march ; and in an ecstasy of 
wonder and reverence he takes up the burden 
of his text, ' What is man, that Thou art mind- 
ful of him ? or the son of man, that Thou 
shouldest deign to visit Him ? ' 

'Though this earth and these heavens were 
to disappear, there are other worlds which roll 
afar. The light of other suns shines upon them, 
and the sky which mantles them is garnished 
with other stars. . . . And what is this world in 
the immensity which teems with tkemt And 
what are they who occupy it ? The universe at 
large would suffer as little in its splendour and 
variety by the destruction of our planet, as the 
verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would 
suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf 



THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 101 

quivers on the branch which supports it It lies 
at the mercy of the slightest accident A breath 
of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on 
the stream of water which passes underneath. 
In a moment of time, the life, which we know by 
the microscope it teems with, is extinguished ; 
and an occurrence, so insignificant in the eye of 
man, and on the scale of his observation, carries 
in it, to the myriads which people this little leaf, 
an event as terrible and as decisive as the de- 
struction of a world. Now, on the grand scale 
of the universe, we, the occupiers of this ball, 
which performs its little round among the suns 
and the systems that astronomy has unfolded, 
we may feel the same littleness and the same 
insecurity.' 

'But if this earth of ours be so little and 
insignificant — a leaf in the forest — a point in 
space — how is it conceivable/ whispers the In- 
fidelity of the heart, rather than the Infidelity of 
the tongue and the pen, — 'how is it conceivable 
that the God who rules such an endless do- 
minion would devise, for the puny inhabitants 
of earth, such a great and wonderful scheme of 
redemption as the New Testament unfolds ? 



102 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Would the eternal co-equal Son come down 
from His throne of infinite majesty, to suffer, 
to die, to make an atonement for creatures so 
utterly contemptible, amid the myriad worlds 
of probably higher beings, that fill every corner 
of the universe ? ' 

To this floating hypothetical objection he 
applies himself in the remainder of the Sermons. 
They are not science proper, or theology proper, 
but they are sublime reveries of a questioning, 
contemplative spirit I do not suppose they 
ever cured an Infidel ; but they have soothed 
many a Christian mind, and charmed the fancy 
of men of literature, and of those men who like 
to brood and speculate on every possible aspect 
of things. 

Seizing upon the contrast brought out be- 
tween the observations of the telescope and of 
the microscope, that the infinitude of the small 
bears as distinct traces of being cared and pro- 
vided for as the infinitude of the large and the 
spacious, he breaks out into an apostrophe on the 
equal love of the Universal Father for all His 
* works, and for the wellbeingof all His creatures. 

' It was the telescope that, by piercing the 



THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 103 

obscurity which lies between us and distant 
worlds, put infidelity in possession of the argu- 
ment against which we are now contending. 
But about the time of its invention, another 
instrument was formed, which laid open a scene 
no less wonderful, and rewarded the inquisitive 
spirit of man with a discovery which serves to 
neutralize the whole of this argument This 
was the microscope. ... By the telescope they 
have discovered that no magnitude, however 
vast, is beyond the grasp of the Divinity. But 
by the microscope we have also discovered 
that no minuteness, however, shrunk from the 
notice of the human eye, is beneath the con- 
descension of His regard. . . . By the one, I 
am told that the Almighty is now at work in 
regions more distant than geometry has ever 
measured, and among worlds more manifold 
than numbers have ever reached. But by the 
other I am also told that, with a mind to com- 
prehend the whole in the vast compass of its 
generality, He has also a mind to concentrate 
a close and a separate attention on each and on 
all of its particulars ; and that the same God who 
sends forth an upholding influence among the 



104 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

orbs and the movements of astronomy, can fill 
the recesses of every single atom with the in- 
timacy of His presence, and travel, in all the 
greatness of His unimpaired attributes, upon 
every one spot and corner of the universe He 
has formed 

' They, therefore, who think that God will not 
put forth such a power, and such a goodness, 
and such a condescension in behalf of this world, 
as are ascribed to Him in the New Testament, 
because He has so many other worlds to attend 
to, think of Him as a man. . . . They only find 
room in their minds for His one attribute of a 
large and general superintendence, and keep out 
of their remembrance the equally impressive 
proofs we have for His other attribute, of a 
minute and multiplied attention to all that di- 
versity of operations, where it is He that worketh 
all in all.' 

His Thursday rotation services occupied him 
all through 1816 ; and in the beginning of 18 17, 
the Astronomical Sermons were published. The 
success was as unexpected as it was unprece- 
dented. Nobody could be more amazed than 
himself and his publisher. Instead of a fair 



THE ASTRONOMICAL SERMONS. 105 

Glasgow sale, on which they had counted, the 
work was flying on the wings of the wind to 
every part of Scotland and of England. It 
came out side by side with the Tales of my 
Landlord, and side by side it kept — a volume 
of Sermons running neck-to-neck with one of 
the magical Waverley Novels ! It passed 
through nine editions in one year, and 20,000 
volumes were in circulation ; they were the rage 
of the season. 'These sermons/ says Hazlitt, 
' ran like wildfire through the country ; were the 
darlings of watering-places, were laid in the 
windows of inns, and were to be met with in 
all places of public resort' Hazlitt himself was 
bewitched. ' We remember finding the volume/ 
he continues, ' in the orchard of the inn at Bur- 
ford Bridge, near Boxhill, and passing a whole 
and very delightful morning in reading it with- 
out quitting the shade of an apple-tree.' The 
wits of London, for a moment, had a sensation 
from the Norlan Calvinist. Sir James Mackin- 
tosh, in the midst of his ' little boxes of know- 
ledge/ which some contemporary wag has 
described, condescended to sip this new theo- 
logical elixir ; and George Canning, the bright, 



io6 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the flashing — himself by this time the Orpheus 
of St Stephens — came under the spell. These 
Sermons, there can be no doubt, won for 
Chalmers that fraternization from the literary 
world which is so seldom accorded to theo- 
logians, and lifted him up at once to the platform 
of British, and even European fame. 





XL 



THE GREAT PULPIT ORATOR. 




E have already noted the singular and 
rare combination of his mental endow- 
ments, — an intellect peculiarly formed 
for the pursuits and methods of positive science, 
combined with a temperament of the most blaz- 
ing intensity, both from bodily constitution and 
from the impulses of feeling and disposition. 
There were thus blended in him the elements, 
usually existing apart, of the physicist, the 
orator, and the man of action. 

When the current of his life bore him away 
from mathematics and natural philosophy into 
the region of morality, of theology, of Chris- 
tian sociology, his intensity had all the larger 
scope ; but how were his scientific habitudes 
to be brought into accord with this new and 

107 



108 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

more excursive sphere of operation ? It was 
in this way. He considered that the methods 
of science — in other words, the rules of the 
Baconian philosophy — were no less applicable to 
his new studies of ethics, theology, and Chris- 
tian polity, than to his old studies of astro- 
nomy, chemistry, and mechanics. Could he not 
make something like the same exact and ex- 
haustive inductions, — in ethics, from the con- 
sciousness, and actions, and history of man; 
in theology, from the revealed facts of Scrip- 
ture; in Christian polity, from the seen and 
tried adaptations of the practical truths of 
Christianity to the spiritual necessities of in- 
dividuals and of commonwealths? and from 
these inductions could he not collect and ar- 
range his deductions, — his general conclusions, 
his reservoirs of universal truth, — which he 
could then open up, and discharge in full 
streams for the instruction and salvation of 
mankind ? 

Hence, in all his writings (his sermons 
amongst the rest) there has been first of all 
an induction — a strict interrogation as to the 
facts falling under the particular subject to 



THE GREAT PULPIT ORATOR. 109 



which his mind has been directed. By this 
induction he arrives at his general principles: 
He lays down his proposition ; and then 
passing from analysis to synthesis, he de- 
monstrates this proposition, more mathematico, 
by a continuous chain of solution. Having 
established his proposition, he commonly ap- 
plies the lesson derived from it, by way of 
corollary, to the various specific cases with 
which he may be concerned. This is the 
characteristic form of his writings. They are 
never what we call essays, — miscellaneous re- 
marks, a string of ' happy thoughts ;' they are 
always set and serious demonstrations. 

We do not undertake, of course, to say 
that he always does demonstrate his proposi- 
tions; we are not concerned at present with 
the soundness or unsoundness, the strength or 
weakness of his proofs : we only say, that the 
form of his reasoning is usually cast in the 
mathematical mould, — that is, he does not 
cumulate a number of arguments, meant by 
their aggregate weight to support the proposi- 
tion ; but he seeks out until he finds what 
he regards to be the one decisive solution, and 



no THOMAS CHALMERS. 

that one solution he draws out link by link, 
with untiring continuity, and as untiring re- 
iteration. Neither do we mean to say that, 
although taking to a mathematical form, he 
affects to put religious and moral and poli- 
tical propositions on the same strict footing 
of evidence as mathematical propositions. He 
was thoroughly aware, with Burke, that 'the 
lines of morality are not like the ideal lines 
of mathematics. They are broad and deep, 
as well as long. They admit of exceptions ; 
they demand modifications. These exceptions 
and modifications are not made by the pro- 
cess of logic, but by the rules of prudence.' 
Chalmers liked to be girt up in the compact 
forms of mathematical reasoning; but still, 
within these forms, he made all the allowances, 
he took into account all 'the exceptions and 
modifications' of which Burke gives warning. 
No one familiar either with his sermons or 
his economic writings (for instance, his Chris- 
tian and Civic Economy of Large Towns), will 
withhold from him the merit of comprehen- 
sive consideration — of that 'prudence' on which 
Burke lays so much stress, in attempting to 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. i 1 1 

solve the complex and practical questions of 
religion, morality, and politics. 

His sermons, as we have said, are marked 
by the same general characteristics as his 
other writings. 

•First of all, he takes a wide compass of 
subjects ; his circumference is very much the 
universe ; he shakes himself free from all nar- 
row, anti- natural orthodoxy. Where being 
is, God is ; where action can reach, Chris- 
tianity should penetrate. He was amongst 
the first who beat all the old traditional dust 
out of the pulpit He ranged at large with- 
out restriction, from the discoveries of science, 
through the mysteries of redemption, into the 
dealings of commerce, the small moralities of 
life, the details of parish management, the real 
wants of the poor, the sufferings of the lower 
animals. The motto round his pulpit was, 
'The field is the world!' Such being the 
breadth and abundance of his subjects, let us 
descend and examine how he treated them. 

He chooses some definite theme. He seldom 
indulges in any exordium, or the exordium 
is a statement of some axioms or postulates 



H2 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

that are to be previously granted But he 
generally at once enunciates his proposition. 
If any definitions or explanations are required, 
he then gives them, and forthwith he enters 
upon his demonstration. Or there may some- 
times be two or three concurrent lines of de- 
monstration, and these he successively takes 
up and carries out to their several conclusions. 
Whatever illustrations he uses, whatever digres- 
sions he makes, are not for their own sakes, 
or interruptions to the train of thought, but, 
on the contrary, are meant to swell the main 
current, and to mark more distinctly where 
and whither it is flowing. His very figures of 
speech, his similes and metaphors, his touches 
of description, his historic allusions, his bub- 
blings-up of genuine poetic sentiment, are not 
thrown in for external effect, — are not exu- 
berances of unpruned fancy, as with such teem- 
ing writers as Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas 
Browne ; but are part of the tissue which he 
is weaving, and cannot without violence be 
separated from their adjuncts. He has no pet 
passages, such as are common amongst our 
eloquent writers. His most glowing illustra- 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. I 13 

tions are part of his proof ; his highest bursts 

of eloquence are just a triumphant way of 

saying Q. E. D. ! 

This close adherence to the demonstrative 

form — this tenacity to his one point until it 

was made fast on the mind — has been matter 

of objection to him, as if he had been a man 

of few ideas, and deficient in onwardness and 

versatility. Robert Hall — I always think with 

an under-current of jealousy, of which, probably, 

he was unconscious — is reported to have said, 

'that the mind of Chalmers moved upon hinges, 

not upon wheels.' As true as smart ! But Hall, 

whose mind was so differently constituted, did 

not perceive the reason why. Hall, from the 

nature of his malady, as well as the nature 

of his talents, was a man of contemplation and 

discussion, a lover of ever -varying thought. 

Chalmers — strong, indefatigable, governing — 

was above all things a man of action ; a lover of 

practical results in the conduct of man and the 

condition of society. The desire of Hall was, 

to present men with a revolving panorama of 

views ; the desire of Chalmers, to fix men round 

a centre of influence. The wheel turns forward 

H 



H4 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the panorama — that suited Hall; the hinge 
holds fast outer objects to a centre — that suited 
Chalmers. Instead of an objection, it was his 
mission : he was born to move upon hinges. 

With all respect for the memory of Hall, 
it might have been better if he had had more 
of the hinge and less of the wheel. Even his 
friendly critic Foster makes it the chief com- 
plaint against his writings, that they want con- 
centration ; that they are often slightly con- 
nected, and loosely held together. The wheel 
too often ran away with him : he rolled on and 
on, without a central purpose. Chalmers was all 
the more useful and effective, if a little tedious 
at times, that he held men fast by his hinge. 

The effect of his strong mathematic turn of 
mind, suffused as it was with such intensity of 
conception and emotion, was, that his subjects 
all became as it were palpable realities; he 
thought and felt and spoke, not as an abstract 
essayist, but as a man standing in the midst of 
a moving and living world. He quotes some- 
where with approbation a saying of Professor 
Robison, that the reason why he preferred 
geometry to algebra was, that in the former 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 1 1 5 

* 

you work with the ipsa corpora — lines and 
angles and surfaces ; whereas in the latter the 
ipsa corpora vanish, and you work only with 
dead numerals and symbols. Chalmers had 
the same preference for the ipsa corpora. Every- 
thing starts around him into motion and life, 
and breathes joy and love, or menaces destruc- 
tion. Hence his great figure is personification ; 
and his demonstrations quicken at last into 
dramatic poems. Look — as the first instance 
which happens to occur to me — to his Astro- 
nomical sermon on the ' Contest for ascendency 
over man among the higher intelligences.' 
Look at the passages where he describes — that 
is, where he sees — this world as 'the actual 
theatre of a keen and ambitious contest amongst 
the upper orders of creation/ It is the same in 
all his writings, even his little pamphlets, or 
short letters. His subjects are not cold propo- 
sitions to be quietly argued about ; they come 
to us with the eyes and breath of living things ; 
they are ministers of grace to be welcomed to 
our heart ; or demons spreading sin and misery, 
whom we must resist for very life, and cry unto 
the great God to deliver us from their fury. 



Ii6 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

On the habit which he purposely adopted 
—of preaching only from manuscript, in fact 
of reading his sermons — we have already com- 
mented, and explained his reasons for pre- 
ferring this method. It might be supposed, 
amongst other effects, that this would take 
away the whole force and edge from his com- 
positions. Some . of our greatest preachers — 
Bossuet, Hall, Schleiermacher — have suffered 
from the inverse method, that of preaching 
extempore, and endeavouring afterwards from 
memory to write out the delivered sermon for 
publication. In all such cases the unanimous 
verdict of their hearers has been, that in the 
re-distillation the finer spirit has evaporated; 
however excellent as books, they lost the fire 
of the living sermons. Chalmers, from his pecu- 
liarities, escaped the disadvantages which might 
well have been anticipated from his not being 
able to preach extempore, and preaching only 
from his manuscript. From the intensity of his 
character, and the warm human feeling which 
constantly possessed him, it is known that he 
composed, not his sermons only, but his other 
writings which were not intended for oral de- 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 1 17 

livery, with the sense of an assemblage of people 
always before him ; that even when writing in 
private, he throbbed, and glowed, and inljr 
thundered to his imagined auditory, * Non est 
magnus orator} says Cicero, who knew so well 
every chord in the oratorical bosom — 'non est 
magnus orator sine multitudine audiente* Chal- 
mers, even in his preparations, had always the 
listening multitude — had always that stimulus 
of the great orator, even in the privacy of the 
closet, and in the silence and solitariness of 
midnight study. He wrote everything to be 
spoken ; he wrote everything as if he were 
speaking it, at least in feeling, if not in actual 
sounds ; he wrote everything with an audience 
glaring in his face. Hetlce his sermons have 
all the advantage, all the verve and palpitation 
of a direct extempore address. They have 
none of the chilliness of discourses written be- 
fore, nor the lukewarmness of discourses served 
up after the delivery; from the peculiarity of 
which we have spoken, they have all the pith of 
preparation, and all the quick leap of impromptu. 
He also, although a slow thinker, was a rapid 
composer — dashed off his writings at full gallop, 



Ii 8 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

often by snatches of ten minutes or half an 
hour, as he was visiting or journeying ; hence 
they have still more the bounding liveliness of 
improvisation. He might be diffuse, careless, 
clumsy — might tear along at times to the very 
verge of declamation ; but he could never be 
tame or dreary. His sermons were always the 
voice of a real man to real men. 

On his style — the mode in which he brings 
out and expresses his thoughts — we shall say 
little. 

There are three things that make up a good 
style, — perspicuity, propriety, harmony; that 
a man clearly express what he really means; 
that his words be pure idiom, and fitting 
to the sense ; that the collocation of the words 
in the sentences fall easily and pleasingly on 
the ear. The first — perspicuity — is alone in- 
dispensable. The second and third — propriety 
and harmony — are not indispensable, for the 
sense may be conveyed without them; but 
without them, a man can never take rank as a 
classical author. Style is something like dress. 
To be good, it is indispensable that there be a 
good texture of cloth, which is like perspicuity. 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 1 19 

Next, though not indispensable, the dress should 
fit well into the shoulders and body. Last, 
though again not indispensable, the whole out- 
line of the dress should be shapely, and hang 
all of a piece upon the man. But suppose the 
stuff good, then for the rest, the fitting will be 
according to the size and shape of the man; 
and so also different outlines will look hand- 
some and comely on different persons. A writer 
must be perspicuous, or his style is not style at 
all, merely the gabble of a barbarian ; but pro- 
priety and harmony will be much according to 
the genius, the passions, the temperaments of 
the different writers, and the lower or higher 
altitude of their subjects ; they can never be 
adjusted by square and rule. 

Chalmers had, in fact, two styles. The one was 
for himself, when merely making his thoughts 
visible to his own eye, as in his Journals and 
the Hor<B Sabbaticce. It was simple, quiet, terse, 
yet marked and impressive. It was also the 
style, I am told, usual with him in conversation. 
The other was for great public audiences, when 
he would have mixed multitudes before him — 
masses of his fellow-men whom he must use 



120 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

every various method to enlighten, persuade, 
subdue, new- mould Apart from the writings 
merely for his own use and solace, he never 
wrote, as we have just mentioned, without 
having in his mind the presence of a great 
listening, heaving crowd. He wrote in his closet 
as if thousands were hanging upon his every 
word ; his pen therefore learned to oratorize. 
This, his public style, was not wanting in sim- 
plicity ; but had a tendency to be diffuse, to be 
over-loaded, to have a bigness of sound beyond 
the magnitude of the sense, to have some poetic 
flourishes in the diction when there was little 
poetry in the thought These were faults inci- 
dent to his always writing as for a great mixed 
multitude, with a torturing anxiety to be under- 
stood by them, and to produce an effect upon 
them ; and also from the headlong rapidity 
of his mode of composition. He possesses at 
least the first quality of style — perspicuity. I 
do not think there is a sentence in all his thirty 
or forty volumes about which there can be any 
doubt from obscurity in the style. His pro- 
priety is not so unimpeachable; his words are 
often pedantic, often forced and quaint, some- 



THE GREAT PULPIT ORATOR. 121 

times vulgar to a purist, and sometimes high 
and swelling when the meaning is sufficiently 
commonplace. In harmony he is by no 
means deficient. He has not the fine inner- 
winding music that ripples through the pages 
of a Jeremy Taylor or a Coleridge ; but there 
is a rolling and a tumbling in his sentences 
which carries you successfully through them, 
and they generally finish up into a good round 
period. The fact is, he was no dainty finical 
man ; he was broad, earnest, eager, impassioned. 
As the man, so the style; not a fine clarified 
liquid, but a fermentation of genius and good- 
ness! 

It is unfortunate for his reputation that he 
published such a multitude of Sermons. Two- 
thirds of them are repetitions, down even to 
phrases and paragraphs. Very many have no- 
thing remarkable about them but the religious 
earnestness of the man. They were composed 
too, as we say, to be spoken from the pulpit, 
not to be read in one's quiet closet. The only 
way to do them justice now, is not to read 
them 'into ourselves/ as the phrase is, but for 
some good and vigorous reader to reproduce 



rz2 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

them before a company, — a test which can 
seldom be applied. Yet there might be some 
twenty selected from the mass, which would 
bear comparison, in real thought, talent, and 
impressiveness, with the highest masters of the 
sacred art, and justify the title we have be- 
stowed upon him — the great pulpit orator of his 
age. 

But howsoever we may estimate his sermons 
as expositions of thought, or as pieces of 
literary composition, there can be no question 
about their overpowering effect as orations. 
And this applied in the same measure to his 
speeches on any particular occasion, and even 
to his writings when he sought to interest the 
public in any particular cause or opinion. The 
effects which he produced had also this sin- 
gularity, — rare with even the most eloquent 
preachers, and only exemplified in the case 
of the highest grade of statesmen-orators — such 
men as Demosthenes and Pitt, and sometimes 
Brougham, — that the effects were not momen- 
tary excitements, the charm of the pleasant 
instrument forgotten ere morning; but were 
permanent^ haunting, and influencing: they af- 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 123 



fected the actions of men, and moulded their 
lives. Few men left Chalmers as they came ; 
he did not touch their nerves simply, he touched 
their hearts. If it was a secular movement, he 
enlisted them on his side : ' What can I do to 
help forward this cause V If it >vas religion, he 
awakened them to serious concern : ' What must 
I do to be saved ?' Of the order, as we say, of 
the highest statesmen-orators, his speeches were 
not a flourish, but a policy ; his sermons were 
generally an epoch in the spiritual life of some 
one or more of his hearers. 

* I know not what it is/ said the most exact- 
ing critic of our age, himself a trained and 
ingenious speaker, Lord Jeffrey, after hearing 
Chalmers in the General Assembly of 18 16, 
'but there is something altogether remarkable 
about that man ! It reminds me more of what 
one reads of as the effect of the eloquence 
of Demosthenes, than anything I ever heard/ 
When in London in 1 81 7 : 'All the world wild 
about Dr. Chalmers/ writes Wilberforce in his 
Diary. . . . ' Off early with Canning, Huskisson, 
and Lord Binning. . . . Vast crowds. ... I 
was surprised to see how greatly Canning was 



124 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

affected ; at times he was quite melted into 
tears.' The then Countess of Elgin mentions 
the same incident in a letter: 'Mr. Canning 
was present at the sermon preached for the 
Hibernian Society. The beautiful passage on 
the Irish character affected him to tears.' ' The 
tartan beats us all t ' exclaimed that lofty orator 
as he left the church, all the more appreciating 
and generous because he was himself a lofty 
orator. Chalmers' friend and publisher, Mr. 
Smith of Glasgow, who accompanied him, writes 
after the delivery of his Missionary Sermon in 
old Rowland Hill's, in this same 1817: 'AH my 
expectations were overwhelmed in the triumph 
of it Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever ex- 
ceeded it, nor did he ever more arrest and 
wonderwork his auditors. I had a full view of 
the whole place. The carrying forward of minds 
never was so visible to me ; a constant assent of 
the head from the whole people accompanied 
all his paragraphs ; and the breathlessness of 
expectation permitted not the beating of a heart 
to agitate the stillness.' One of his auditors on 
this occasion was good, warm-hearted Daniel 
Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta. Meet- 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 125 

ing Dr. Duff, the Scottish apostle to India, 
immediately after the tidings of the death of 
Chalmers had arrived at Calcutta: 'Ah!' said 
he, ' sad news, sad news, not only for the Church 
of Scotland, but for Christendom. Ah/ he 
added, 'he once made me a Dissenter. I went 
to Rowland Hill's to hear his missionary sermon ; 
and though thirty years since, the thrill of it 
remains here* — pressing his hand upon his heart 
— ' till this day/ 

His Biographer has collected numerous in- 
stances to exemplify the amazing effects of his 
oratory. We shall present a few of them, as 
giving a more forcible illustration than any 
general description or eulogium. 

The first is an account given by Dr. Ward- 
law of the delivery of the Astronomical Ser- 
mons in Glasgow in 1815-16. Dr. Wardlaw, 
Independent minister in Glasgow, was himself 
a man of distinguished ability, ripe scholarship, 
and grave and impressive eloquence, of which 
many memorials remain, and are highly prized. 

'The Tron Church contains, if I mistake 
not, about 1400 hearers, according to the ordi- 
nary allowance of seat-room; when crowded, 



126 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

of course proportionally more. . . . To see a 
place of worship of the size mentioned crammed 
above and below on a Thursday forenoon, dur- 
ing the busiest hours of the day, with fifteen 
or sixteen hundred hearers, and these of all 
descriptions of persons, in all descriptions of 
professional occupations, — the busiest, as well 
as those who had most leisure on their hands, — 
those who had least to spare taking care so 
to arrange their business engagements previ- 
ously as to make time for the purpose, — all 
pouring in through the wide entrance at the 
side of the Tron steeple half-an-hour before 
the time of service, to secure a seat, or content, 
if too late for this, to occupy, as many did, 
standing-room, — this was indeed a novel and 
strange sight. Nor was it once merely or twice, 
but month after month ; the day was calculated 
when his turn to preach again was to come 
round, and anticipated with even impatient 
longing by multitudes. 

' Suppose the congregation thus assembled — 
pews filled with sitters, and aisles to a great 
extent with standers. They wait in eager ex- 

"ctation. The preacher appears. . . . There 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 127 

is a hush of dead silence. The text is an- 
nounced, and he begins. Every countenance 
is up — every eye bent with fixed intentness on 
the speaker. As he kindles the interest grows. 
Every breath is held, every cough is suppressed, 
every fidgety movement is settled; every one, 
riveted himself by the spell of the impassioned 
and entrancing eloquence, knows how sensitively 
his neighbour will resent the very slightest dis- 
turbance. Then, by and by, there is a pause. 
The speaker stops, — to gather breath, to wipe 
his forehead, to adjust his gown, — and purposely 
too, and wisely, to give the audience as well 
as himself a moment or two of relaxation. The 
moment is embraced. There is free breath- 
ing ; suppressed coughs get vent ; postures are 
changed ; there is a universal stir as of persons 
who could not have endured the constraint much 
longer. The preacher bends forward — his hand 
is raised — all is again hushed. The same still- 
ness and strain of unrelaxed attention is re- 
peated, — more intent still, it may be, than be- 
fore, as the interest of the subject and of the 
speaker advances; and so, for perhaps four or 
five times in the course of a set-mon, there is 



128 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the relaxation, and the at it again, till the 
final winding-up/ 

Chalmers was specially invited to preach 
before the Lord High Commissioner at the 
General Assembly of 1816. He preached a 
condensation of the three first of his Astro- 
nomical Sermons. 

'The attention of the auditory/ states an 
eye-witness, 'was so upon the stretch, that 
when the preacher made a pause at the con- 
clusion of an argument, a sort of sigh, as if 
for breath, was perceptible through the house/ 
And, after quoting a magnificent passage (the 
last of the two which we have previously quoted 
from his Astronomical Sermons), another wit- 
ness present thus describes the scene: — 'At 
the end of this passage, there ran through the 
congregation a suppressed but perfectly audible 
murmur of applause — an occurrence unpre- 
cedented in the course of the delivery of a 
sermon, but irresistible in order to relieve our 
highly-excited feelings/ 

We next take perhaps the most remarkable 
instance of alia— when, by request of the gran- 
dees of England, he delivered his. course of 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 129 

lectures on Church Establishments in London, 
in spring 1838. He was now verging on sixty, 
but, as we shall see, neither had his natural 
force abated, nor his sovereignty over men, 
even men the greatest and most refined and 
enlightened It was, perhaps, the. zenith of his 
oratorical triumphs, — and he all the time so 
calm and lowly! His great soul was fixed 
only upon his cause, — scarcely even feeling one 
breath of that human applause which was 
rolling around him, — which he always valued 
so little, — of which no man knew better than 
he the variability and the vanity. 

Hear the minute and picturesque account of 
Dr. Begg, who was at his side during the mis- 
sion : — 

' Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm which 
prevailed in London. The great city seemed 
stirred to its very depths. The Doctor sat 
when delivering his lectures behind a small 
table, the hall in front being densely crowded 
with one of the most brilliant audiences that 
ever assembled in Britain. It was supposed 
that at least five hundred of those present 
were peers and members of the House of Comr 



130 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

mons. Sir James Graham was a very constant 
attender. The sitting attitude of Dr. Chalmers 
seemed at first irreconcilable with much energy 
or effect But such an anticipation was at once 
dispelled by the enthusiasm of the speaker, 
responded to, if possible, by the still more 
intense enthusiasm of the audience; and oc- 
casionally the effect was even greatly increased 
by the eloquent man springing unconsciously 
to his feet, and delivering with overwhelming 
power the more magnificent passages, — a move- 
ment which, on one occasion at least, was 
imitated by the entire audience, when the words, 
"The king cannot, the king dare not," were 
uttered in accents of prophetic vehemence, 
that must still ring in the ears of all who 
heard them, and were responded to by a whirl- 
wind of enthusiasm which was probably never 
exceeded in the history of eloquence. . . . 
Nothing was more striking, however, amidst 
all this excitement, than the childlike humility 
of the great man himself. All the flattery 
seemed to produce no effect whatever on 
him; his mind was entirely absorbed in his 
great object ; and the same kind, playful, and 



THE GREAT PULPIT ORATOR. 131 

truly Christian spirit that so endeared him 
to us all, was everywhere apparent in his con- 
duct/ 

James Grant — long - practised observer of 
public men and events in London — has, in his 
Memoirs of Sir George Sinclair, added some 
quaint little touches to fill up the corners of 
this picture. It brings to one's mind all the 
well-remembered awkward tricks of the great 
orator, his impetuosity and unconscious careless- 
ness; which, however, never made him ridicu- 
lous, but rather served to enhance the originality 
and impressiveness and unsophisticated charm 
that was about the man. 

'The Bishop of Exeter, and Dr. Blomfield, 
the then Bishop of London, both attended these 
lectures, and listened to them, as I can state 
from personal observation, with the most pro- 
found attention, and, if any faith is to be placed 
in Lavater^s theory of physiognomy, with the 
greatest delight 

' But, apart from the matter of these lectures 
of Dr. Chalmers, there was something in the 
Doctor's appearance and delivery which, to a 
London audience, for the most part very intel- 



132 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

lectual, and of high social position, must have 
seemed very strange. His great massive head, 
his broad forehead, and white neck-tie thrown 
carelessly around his neck, and as crumpled 
as if he had slept in it, were things which in 
combination formed quite a study. Then there 
was the broad Scotch accent, the broadest I 
ever heard, falling all the more strangely on 
the English ear because of the animation, the 
earnestness, and the energy with which he 
spoke; while, to add to the uniqueness of 
the scene, there was the curious sight of his 
spectacles falling off his nose with unfailing 
punctuality, when he came to the concluding 
word in any of the more magnificent bursts of 
eloquence with which his lectures so largely 
abounded. Mr. Sinclair was present in the 
Hanover Square Rooms, as were many bishops, 
peers, members of the House of Commons, and 
other distinguished persons, while Dr. Chalmers' 
lectures were in course of delivery.' 

Although, as we have said, he could never 
become ridiculous, yet there were always little 
outrt incidents happening, from the tumultuous 
vehemence of his manner, which those who wit* 



THE GREA T PULPIT OR A TOR. 133 

nessed them would remember and repeat with 
infinite gusto. I think it is Mr. Masson who 
relates, that on some great field-day in the 
General Assembly, when he was pressing his 
views with even more than the usual amount of 
fine frenzy, an obtuse member, who could not 
distinguish enthusiasm from a fit of rage, rose 
and proposed to adjourn the debate, ' because/ 
he said, ' the reverend gentleman was in such an 
excited state that it would be impossible for 
them to carry on the discussion with the neces- 
sary calmness.' Chalmers, thus suddenly brought 
up in the midst of his bounding career, cried out, 
almost choking with indignation, ' Exceeted, sir ! 
— exceeted ! I am as cool, sir, as an algebraic 
problem.' And so he was. The vehemence 
was mere matter of temperament and expres- 
sion : it was simply his style of demonstration. 
In the midst of this outer-whirling tempest, he 

' Dilated stood, 
Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved :' 

his great passions seven times heated, but his 
intellect remaining all the while perfectly clear 
and undisturbed. It has often been seen, when 
he was suddenly stopped in the course of his 



1 34 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

apparent furies > that there was not a particle of 
either nervous agitation or mental commotion ; 
he was at once as collected as the merest proser, 
— in fact, 'as cool as an algebraic problem/ 

And now for a stranger scene, if not a more 
brilliant. In the summer of the same 1838, he 
made a journey to Paris, personally to acknow- 
ledge the honour lately conferred upon him, of 
being elected Corresponding Member of the 
Institute. Whilst in Paris, he preached in one 
of the Protestant chapels ; and, in the following 
account, the pastor bears testimony that his 
laurels did not wither in the city of Bossuet and 
Massillon and Lacordaire. 

'I cannot recall either the year, or the 
month, or the Sunday v^hen I had the privi- 
lege of seeing Dr. Chalmers occupy my pulpit 
in the chapel Taitfcout ; but that which I have 
never forgot* nor ev$r will forget all my life, 
is that I have seen and heard him preach. 
The impressions which he made upon me, and 
upon the multitudes who thronged to hear 
him, are of the kind which are never effaced. 

' It was at the period when he came to Paris 
to be, I think, received as a member of the 



i 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 135 

Institute of France. My chapel was then situ- 
ated in the street of which it has taken and 
kept the name. ... It was capable of contain- 
ing from 700 to 800 persons. . . . Although 
ordinarily well filled, the chapel never was so 
crowded. It was literally choke full ; and that 
compact multitude was composed in great part 
of persons strangers to our worship. There 
were few, indeed, of the members of the In- 
stitute, and of the different learned bodies of 
Paris who were not present, all attracted by 
the consummate interest inspired in them by 
the science and reputation of the Doctor. The 
places became so few that, feeling it my duty 
in courtesy to give up the two or three seats 
which I occupied, one after another, I was 
reduced at last to take my seat on one of the 
steps of the stair leading up to my pulpit ; 
and it was from thence that I could at once 
see the aspect of the assembly, appreciate the 
profound attention which it yielded to the 
Doctor, hear him myself, and follow all his 
movements. 

' There was nothing in the commencement 
which particularly struck me. I would even 



136 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

say that his attitude, his vacant look, and the 
monotonous tone of his voice, during the offer- 
ing up of the prayer which preceded his sermon, 
were very far from revealing to me the man 
he was. But in a short time the great preacher 
unveiled himself; and I was not slow, with the 
whole audience, to be seized with admiration, 
and more and more mastered, by the power of 
his language and of his oratorical action. 

' He took his text in the First of John iv. 8, 
"God is love." His discourse was written. 
During some time he had before him his manu- 
script, which he held fast with the left hand, 
and followed each line with the finger of the 
right But this reading, which he knew how 
to render as attractive as impressive, was fre- 
quently interrupted to give place to the extem- 
porary suggestion or exposition of new points 
of view of the subject not treated in the written 
discourse ; and the language which his emotion 
furnished then to the Doctor was energetic, 
finely-shaded, clear, and harmonious — that of 
true eloquence. I seem yet to myself to see 
him, with his manuscript grasped in his hand, 
the body bending forward a little over the 



THE GREA T PULPIT ORA TOR. 137 

pulpit, and seizing hold of all his auditors, ad- 
dressing to them appeals the most direct, and 
the most fitted to reach them, even to the 
depths of their conscience, His words, spring- 
ing evidently from his convictions, and from 
the overflowings of his heart, were the faithful 
expression of them, and had something of the 
rapidity and of the force of the torrent as it 
dashes from the mountain, and bears everything 
along in its passage. The action of the Doctor 
appeared to me no less remarkable than his 
language. His whole being seemed to me to 
rush into his preaching/ 

These are a few specimens, out of the num- 
berless instances which might be given, of the 
unique and astounding effect of his oratory. 
For parallels one must go to the ancient times 
of Demosthenes, or to the Middle Ages with its 
St Bernard. The man, whose voice thus sub- 
jugated his fellow-men for more than thirty 
years — who was followed at sixty-seven as at 
thirty-seven — who, with so much that was out- 
wardly uncouth and odd, hushed the frivolity of 
London once and again, and melted the souls of 
the French philosophers in a half-known tongue 



i 3 8 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

— who was bailed with audible applause in a 
sermon before the Royal Commissioner, and 
made princes of the blood and senators and 
bishops start to their feet, and break into 
rounds of wildest acclamation — who fixed Haz- 
litt under the apple-tree for a day, and drew 
compliments from Mackintosh, and the tears of 
childhood from Canning, — this man may fairly 
be crowned, in our intellectual capital, as the 
greatest pulpit orator of his age. 





XII. 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 




UT though zealous and constant preach- 
ing was the main instrument of his 
Christian embassy, yet he came not 
to Glasgow merely to be a preacher, least of all 
to be the popular preacher, on whose lips the 
sensational mobs would hang like a cluster of 
bees. He came not that he might merely 
announce from the pulpit every Sunday the 
message of divine reconciliation, and then 
disappear from the view, and indulge in his 
own pleasures, or immure himself in his study 
for the rest of the week. He came to be a 
parish minister in Glasgow, as he had been in 
Kilmany. 

The first survey of Glasgow confounded him. 
' It is not easy for me to describe my general 

189 



140 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

feeling in reference to the population with which 
I have more immediately to do. I feel as if it 
were a mighty and impenetrable mass, truly 
beyond the strength of one individual arm, and 
before which, after a few furtive and unavailing 
exertions, nothing remains but to sit down in 
the idleness of despair. It is a number, it is a 
magnitude, it is an endless succession of houses 
and families, it is an extent of field, which puts 
at a distance all hope of a deep or universal 
impression/ 

Instead of a parish with its six or seven 
hundred souls, like Kijmany, the Tron contained 
a population of 12,000, generally of the poorest 
classes of the people. 

There was the church of the parish rising in 
the midst, it is true, but totally inadequate for the 
population ; and this church, instead of being 
occupied only or chiefly by the parishioners, 
by the multitudes of the circumjacent poor, 
was largely filled by persons coming from all 
quarters, by the rich and educated, who were 
attracted by the eloquence of him who regarded 
himself in that pulpit as solely the minister of 
the Tron parishioners. The letting of the seats 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 141 

• 

being in the hands of the Town Council, and 
being a source of revenue, was farmed for the 
utmost profit that could be extracted ; the 
charges were too high for the means of the 
poor; and the mass of the population conse- 
quently, however much inclined, were denied 
access to their own sanctuary. 

Glasgow, like the other large towns, had, in 
its rapid and vast extension, lost hold of the 
system of parochial schools, — of a national 
school for every church and parish. It had 
no parochial schools proper, but only various 
kinds of voluntary schools — from rich founda- 
tions down to miserable little gatherings in 
back rooms and garrets. Hence great multi- 
tudes of the children of the poor were untaught, 
or ill-taught — either sunk in, or verging upon, a 
state of barbarism, in the midst of the surround- 
ing boasted civilisation. 

Again, in the administration of the relief for 
paupers, Glasgow, like many other of the large 
towns, and many even of the rural parishes in 
the more southern parts of Scotland, infected 
by the contiguous example of England, had 
departed from the old Scottish method of 



142 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

relief, derived mainly from the church-door 
collections, placed under the management of 
the session of the particular parish. The 
church-door collections were still nominally 
kept up, but were supplemented, or rather were 
almost entirely superseded, by a compulsory 
assessment upon the property of the parish. 
I say almost entirely superseded, for com- 
pulsory assessment always tends to dry up 
voluntary contribution. The church-door col- 
lections, again, were not left in the disposal of 
the particular session, but were all remitted to 
a common fund, under the* control of a general 
session, composed of all the ministers and elders 
of the city. The compulsory assessments, on 
the other hand, were committed to the manage- 
ment of a corporate body called the Town 
Hospital. The processes of this administration, 
as might well be supposed from such a number 
of wheels within wheels, were cumbrous, injudi- 
cious, and wasteful, productive only of ever- 
increasing pauperism, fertile only in misery — 
unblessing and unblest. 

Chalmers' whole theory of a parish was here 
contradicted and reversed. His theory was — 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 143 

the parish domain limited so as to contain, at 
most, only about 400 families, or 2000 persons ; 
the parish church filled by the parish people; 
and each of the inhabitants, from the oldest to 
the youngest, the personal acquaintance of the 
minister and office-bearers, the personal object 
of their interest and solicitude ; each parish to 
have its publicly endowed school, the education 
not gratuitous, but at such charges that the 
poorest might not be deterred ; and the authori- 
ties of the parish, with the collections of their 
own church in their own hands, to take the 
whole burden of the poor of their own parish, 
to see efficiently after all their necessities ; and 
to direct the whole of this administration with 
a view to raise the poor above the stigma and 
defilement of compulsory relief altogether. 

Chalmers was not the man to 'sit down in 
the idleness of despair.' He speedily got rid 
of his first feeling of amazement and helpless- 
ness. Method, diligence, and sustained energy 
enabled him to manage, and manage most effec- 
tively, what, at the first sight, seemed utterly 
beyond his power. 

His eight years in Glasgow — first in the Tron, 



144 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and afterwards in St. John's — would fill a goodly 
volume; and it must be admitted that the 
interest, the wonder, the instruction, lie chiefly 
in the details, and are greatly lost when given 
in mere generalities. The originality and merit 
of the many plans which made up his parochial 
system — that is, in other words, his system for 
the religious and moral management of com- 
munities — do not come out so much in startling 
general theories, as in wise, simple, efficacious 
methods of working. Hence it is, if *we wish 
to learn the lessons of his Glasgow experience, 
we must go to the study of the details, as we 
have them narrated, for instance, in the twenty- 
first volume of his collected works, on the 
Parochial System. Mere general descriptions, 
however accurate or graphic, will fail to convey 
any adequate representation. He was, as we 
have already called him, a Moral Engineer ; and 
if we wish to derive instruction from his plans 
— anything beyond a moment's entertainment — 
we must not simply gaze at his more conspicuous 
towers and ramparts, but we must examine to 
the minutiae, his whole lines of attack or de- 
fence. 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 145 

It is impossible for me within my present 
limits to give any such minute account I can 
only offer a few generalities ; and the only 
use of these again will be, to bring out a mere 
tracing of the main points, which he always 
considered that his Glasgow experience had 
established. 

I pass over altogether his operations in the 
Tron, where it was impossible for him to 
realize his parochial ideals, and confine myself 
to St John's, which he entered in 1820. The 
magistrates conferred upon him, in that new 
parish, greater, though not sufficient facilities, 
for working out his experiments. Many of 
them were actuated by sympathy in his designs, 
but some of them, it is said, with a quiet malice, 
wished to give him scope for ridiculous failure, 
and free the bailies of Glasgow, who could fine 
and imprison the poor wretches but could not 
improve them, from the oratorical clamour of 
this ecclesiastical busybody. 

I pass over his strictly pastoral duties, such 

as visitations, and the institution of elders and 

deacons. I must also pass without notice, 

though most unwillingly, his judicious and un- 
it 



146 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

wearied exertions for education, in which he 
was a pioneer, like Lancaster and Brougham, 
against the squirearchy, and the ruling factions, 
and the privileged clergy. I can do no more 
than mention, in passing, that it was from the 
example of his Sabbath schools in the Tron — 
of the peculiar attractiveness there was in 
having a distinctly local school, as a school for 
one lane, one side of a street, and so on — that 
he discovered the importance of local insti- 
tutions in the work of reclaiming men from 
barbarism and irreligion, — the importance of 
breaking up the impermeable mass of home 
heathenism, and then employing, upon each 
separate little locality, every Christianizing 
and civilising agency. This was the eureka 
in all his future warfare against town heathen- 
ism. It was ever afterwards by this charm of 
LOCALISM that he sought to win back the out- 
cast population of large towns to humanity, 
decency, and intelligence, and to the still higher 
influences of religion. In short, he would 
master the 'mighty and impenetrable mass* 
of Glasgow, by subdividing it into so many 
little Kilmanies. 'Let/ he exclaims in the 



BOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 147 

visions of his Christian philanthropy, — 'Let 
next-door neighbours be supplied with one 
common object of reverence and regard in the 
clergyman who treats them alike as members 
of the same parochial family ; let his church 
be the place of common repair upon the Sab- 
baths ; let his sermon, which told the same 
things to all, suggest the common topics on 
which the similarly impressed might enter into 
conversations, that begin and strengthen more 
and more the friendship between them ; let 
the intimacies of the parish children be formed 
and ripened together at the same school ; — these 
all help as cementing influences, by which to 
bind this aggregate of human beings into one 
community ; and, with a speed and certainty 
now by many inconceivable, to set up a village 
or domestic economy even in the heart of a 
crowded metropolis.' 

But his most remarkable experiment in Glas- 
gow was that directed to the diminution, in- 
deed to the extinction of pauperism — stretching 
out, as this experiment did, into all the social 
questions bearing upon the condition and pro- 
spects of the poor, and of the working class. 



148 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

This experiment again, for any useful appli- 
cation of it, must be studied in all the working 
details ; but the mere general routine of the 
process was quite simple and intelligible. 

By the old Scotch law, as modified by uni- 
versal practice, relief was allowed to the im- 
potent or disabled poor, not to the able-bodied 
or those capable of work. The administration 
of relief was vested in the kirk-sessions in rural 
parishes, and in the magistrates in burghs. The 
funds for relief were, the voluntary collections 
made at the church-doors, or, in case of necesity, 
there was power to levy an assessment on the 
property of the parish. 

Without discussing what may be the exact 
difference between the poor-law in England and 
in Scotland as originally framed, the mode of 
management and the habits of the people 
created a difference that was in fact diametri- 
cally opposite. Whereas the poor in England, 
even the able-bodied, believed they had a right 
to legal compulsory relief, the poor in Scot- 
land, even the impotent as well as the able- 
bodied, had no notion of any right ; they felt 
that their real dependence was upon themselves 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 149 

and their relatives ; or if the community should 
aid them, it was only by the church-door col- 
lections, or other voluntary benefactions. In 
consequence, although there could be recourse 
upon assessment under the old Scotch Acts, 
there were very few parishes that had adopted 
the method of assessment prior to 1760. The 
usual account given is, that there were only 
three instances of assessment prior to 1700 ; 
from 1700 to 1800, ninety-three in all ; and from 
1800 to 1 817 (about the time Chalmers came to 
Glasgow), forty-nine new cases ; that is, about 
150 cases of assessment altogether, out of the 
whole 1000 parishes of Scotland. The Poor- 
Law Report of 1843 declares, that c a strong 
feeling in opposition to a legal assessment has 
. . . existed in Scotland. ... It is maintained 
that the existence of an assessment in a parish 
has a tendency to encourage pauperism, and to 
increase the number of the poor, without materi- 
ally bettering their condition.' It was seldom 
that the poor could lay by a sufficient store to 
maintain themselves in old age, or in case of 
confirmed illness or infirmity ; but it was found, 
by almost unfailing experience, that in such 



150 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

cases they were cheerfully taken care of by 
their children, or by near relatives, or by the 
liberality of some old master, or of kind neigh- 
bours. It was always with extreme reluctance 
they fell back upon ' the parish ; ' their children 
or kinsfolk would have felt this a stain upon the 
family name ; or, if they sat by and allowed it, 
they would have incurred the scorn of the whole 
neighbourhood. Thus it was that, up to about 
fifty years ago (and much later in most places), 
the Scottish people grew up in an abhorrence 
of pauperism ; and the fixed national sentiment 
was, that the poor, sinking into indigence, 
should be supported by their relatives ; or, if 
these failed, then by the hand of spontaneous 
benevolence. 

This in general was the method of poor 
management and poor relief for which Chal- 
mers contended. It was no novelty which he 
sought to introduce ; the novelty was that which 
he determinedly opposed— even that of foist- 
ing in a universal compulsory assessment, and 
corrupting the poor with the belief that they 
had a legal right to demand support from the 
parish. He stood by the old ways. His origi- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 151 

nality did not He in inventing any new or un- 
tried method, but in strengthening the old 
Scottish method, by explaining its philosophy, — 
by showing how it was founded on the clearest 
moral and economic principles, — and further, 
by giving it a permanent organization, and 
connecting it with his localism, so that no poor 
man should ever be lost in the crowd, but, in 
his circumscribed locality, should have all the 
blessings of neighbourly regard and assistance — 
of education, religion, and, where need was, of 
charity. 

Chalmers divided his St John's parish of 
10,000 inhabitants — 2000 families — into twenty- 
five districts, called proportions, each embracing 
from 60 to 100 families, or a maximum of 500 
individuals — about the number of his whole 
parishioners in Kilmany. He appointed a 
deacon, generally a resident, to attend to the 
temporal concerns of each proportion. Any 
one claiming relief applied to his deacon. The 
deacon made a rigorous inquiry into the case ; 
and, from his local knowledge, he had great 
advantages in the inquiry. If the claim was 
an imposition, or undeserving, it was, of course, 



152 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

dismissed But impostors soon ceased, when 
it was known there would be a searching inves- 
tigation. Where there was real need, the deacon 
next endeavoured to ascertain whether there was 
not some resource to save the applicant from 
pauperism, that is, work for him to do, or some 
near relative that would assist him over his diffi- 
culties. Even if there was need, and no apparent 
help, the deacons would not immediately place 
him on the pauper roll ; they would stand aside, 
as it were, and leave the case to itself, while 
secretly they were keeping a watchful eye upon 
the man that he might not starve, or sink into 
extreme suffering. But almost as sure as they 
stood aside, it was found that ample assistance 
flowed in upon him from private sources of 
benevolence, particularly from his own neigh- 
bours who might be better off than himself, 
or who could spare something from their little 
store. 

' Were it right/ demands Chalmers, brighten- 
ing over an instance of this kind — 'Were it 
right that any legal charity whatever should 
arrest a process so beautiful ? Were it even 
right that the interference of the wealthier at 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 153 

a distance should lay a freezing interdict on 
the play of those lesser streams which circulate 
round the abode of penury and pain V 

In cases of helpless destitution, sufficient 
relief was afforded from the church-door collec- 
tions, but always in the guise of being only 
temporary. 

Before he entered upon his pastorate, the 
cost of pauperism in the parish had sometimes 
amounted to £1400 ; he reduced it to about 
£250 — that is, £200 for the old cases which he 
had inherited, and £50 for the new. He reduced 
the average cost to £30 per 1000, whereas the 
average cost of the other parishes in Glasgow was 
about £200, and in many parishes in England 
was upwards of £1000, per 1000 of the popula- 
tion. From the close resident agency, imposture 
was impossible ; it was to the really indigent 
alone that the relief went ; and the relief was 
so judiciously and kindly distributed, and the 
agents and other friends were so serviceable to 
the poor, in a thousand ways, that the parish of 
St John's became exposed to an undue influx 
of the poor, instead of their being driven out, 
as was the prediction of those wise heads, the 



154 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

practical men. Instead of any compulsory 
assessment, the voluntary contributions were 
so abundant as to swell into large balances, 
which were ultimately applied to the erection 
and endowment of schools for the children ^of 
the parish. More agents offered than were 
needed ; few retired — they grew to the love of 
their work ; and, indeed, instead of any burden 
upon them, it was found, after the machinery 
was once fairly set agoing, that about three 
hours a month was all that was required for the 
full performance of their duties. 

This system of management lasted eighteen 
years — fourteen after Chalmers left Glasgow ; 
and was given up from no defects in itself, but 
owing to causes altogether extraneous. Of its 
complete success there never has been any 
serious question ; the only attempts have been, 
to give some exceptional solutions of that suc- 
cess, to make out that it could not be of uni- 
versal application. I can state for myself, after 
much consideration, that there are some theo- 
retical objections to this plan, for which it may 
be difficult to find the exact theoretical answer ; 
but there are none that cannot be met by a 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 155 



better than a theoretical answer, namely, in the 
established facts of the experiment itself. 

An able and impartial witness, Mr. Tuffnel, 
English Poor-Law Commissioner in 1833, when 
the plan was still in active operation, has borne 
this undisputed testimony in its favour : 

'This system has been attended with the 
most triumphant success for thirteen years ; it 
is now in perfect operation, and not a doubt 
is expressed by its managers of its continuing 
to remain so. . . . The essence of the St John's 
management consists in the superior system of 
inspection which it establishes. . . . This per- 
sonal attention of the rich to the poor seems to 
be one of the most efficient modes of preventing 
pauperism/ 

Chalmers' own final comprehensive deduction 
from his whole experience, is this : 

' It remains an article in our creed . . . that, 
for the relief of general indigence, the charity of 
law ought, in every instance, to be displaced, to 
make room for the charity of principle and of 
spontaneous kindness.' 

His method, as we have said, to yield any 
available instruction, must be studied in its 



156 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

details and its actual working ; but we may 
compress its main operations into the following 
rules : — 
First, — Spontaneous charity organized within 
a definite locality, finally to do away all 
compulsory assessment 
Second, — This spontaneous charity to be dis- 
pensed either in connection with local 
churches, or through the medium of volun- 
tary local associations. 
Third, — The area of each particular manage- 
ment not to exceed a population of 2000 ; 
such area to be subdivided into proportions 
of about 80 families each, or 400 individuals. 
Fourth, — Each proportion to be placed under 
the charge of one or more agents, as may 
be necessary. The agents, so far as pos- 
sible, to be resident within their respective 
proportions. 
Fifth, — The agents to have the usual duties of 
inspection, to make themselves acquainted 
with the poor of their proportions, to receive 
applications, investigate cases, and report to 
the committee or aggregate body of manage- 
ment; and, under advice and direction of 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 157 

such committee or body, either to refuse 
relief, or grant such relief under such condi- 
tions as may appear most advantageous. 
Sixth, — The constant object to be, to discri- 
minate and beneficially assist the really 
necessitous and deserving poor; to dimi- 
nish and ultimately extinguish pauperism ; 
and to foster amongst the poor the habits 
of industry, prudence, frugality, saving, an 
honest desire to rise in the world, and single 
dependence on their own exertions. 
These precious experiences of Chalmers were 
passed over with neglect at the time, or treated 
as Utopian. ' O this would be all very well, if we 
had a Chalmers in every parish ! ' He repeated 
his warnings, — still unheeded, even rebuked as 
a kind of hard-hearted dogmatist, — when the 
rash and mischievous Act of 1845 discharged 
upon Scotland all the evils from which England 
had so long been suffering. But stern necessity 
and wide-spreading alarm at the present burst- 
ing forth of all the sewers of pauperism, are 
forcing the public everywhere to the conclusions 
which Chalmers, fifty years ago, dinned into 
the ears of his thoughtless countrymen. Not 



158 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

to speak of England, where the poor-rates have 
increased from five and a half millions in 1859 
to seven and a half millions in 1868, and where 
the system is straining, as if on the eve of ex- 
plosion, — look at the revulsion of opinion all 
through Scotland, among men of property, and 
of observation, and of well-regulated benevo- 
lence. In the evidence lately taken before the 
Parliamentary Committee on the Scottish Poor- 
Laws, how unanimous and emphatic are all the 
witnesses — especially those who have no official 
bias, and even most of the officials too — as to the 
belief, now fixed in the minds of the poor in 
Scotland, that the parish is bound to provide for 
them ; how, with this belief, pauperism is in- 
creasing, and all the old pride and decency of 
the Scottish peasantry are disappearing; how 
the poor are sinking in degradation and ever 
deeper misery, whilst property is being eaten 
up, without doing any sensible good, only aggra- 
vating the disease. Almost all admit, that the 
only remedy is to return as far as possible to 
Chalmers' principles, — of stifling the idea of any 
right to relief; of making the inspection more 
close and efficient ; and of calling in more and 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 159 

more the healthful processes of spontaneous 
charity. Already a most promising Association 
has been instituted in Edinburgh for improving 
the condition of the poor ; it is shaped on the 
Chalmers model of subdividing large cities into 
convenient proportions, — 'little Kilmanies,' — and 
placing each of them under their voluntary 
agents. London is giving signs of resorting to 
the same plan, — in fact, to Chalmers' plan. All 
the recent experiments — in Elberfeld (Prussia), 
in Paris, in New York — just read like so many 
variations of Chalmers' plan in St John's, fifty 
years ago,— the same local subdivisions, the 
same* willingness of unpaid agents, the same 
close inspection of cases, the really indigent pro- 
perly relieved, imposition exploded, pauperism 
becoming extinguished in the fulness and hearti- 
ness of spontaneous benevolence. I do not say 
they have borrowed from him, but they have 
verified his declarations, and they have vindi- 
cated him from the little men who mocked at 
his warnings, and, indeed, all his work. What 
the sagacity of genius taught Chalmers fifty 
years ago, the necessity of circumstances is now 
imposing upon the statesmen and civic admini- 



160 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

strators both in Britain and upon the Conti- 
nent, and amongst our kindred of the great 
West 

Listen, — for the very breath and life of our 
body politic are depending upon a wise solution 
as to our pauperism, — listen, then, to a few out of 
the many valuable testimonies given before the 
Committee now sitting on the Scottish Poor- 
Laws. 

'Nobody/ says Dr. Alexander Wood of Edin- 
burgh, ' who sees the operation of the Act as at 
present administered, doubts for an instant that 
every pauper claims, as a right, to be supported.' 

' I look/ says Mr. Ballingal of Islay, who has 
been member of twenty-eight parochial boards, 
' I look upon this delusion, this fallacy, of . . . 
giving of a legal right for support to the disso- 
lute, the intemperate, and the idle, as the key to 
the whole mystery of the increasing pauperism 
in Scotland as well as in England/ 

' It is now/ says the present chairman of the 
Board of Supervision in Edinburgh, 'a matter 
of trite observation, that all poor-laws have an 
inherent tendency to foster pauperism, to in- 
crease the expenditure for the relief of the poor, 



nOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 161 

and to deteriorate the character of the popula- 
tion among whom the law is administered/ 
' In 1845 ' {the date of the new law), says Mr. 

Smythe, secretary to the Inquiry in 1843, 'there 

* 

were only 230 assessed parishes, and 650 which 
raised their funds by voluntary contributions ; 
and in 1868 there were 790 assessed, and 97 
which raised their funds by voluntary contribu- 
tions/ 

'The number of poor on the roll/ says Dr. 
Alexander Wood/ in 1845 was 63,070. In 1868 
it was 80,032. . . . Then of casual poor, in 1845, 
the number was 26,894. In 1868 it was 37,882. 
. . . Then the total expenditure, exclusive of 
buildings, in 1845, was £295,232. In 1868, it 
was £795,483. . . . The expense of manage- 
ment has increased from £17,445 in 1845, to 
£94,452 in 1868/ 

'There is a general and ever-increasing dis- 
satisfaction with our whole poor-law system/ 
says Mr. Milne Home of Wedderburn, vice- 
president of the Royal Society, a large landed 
proprietor, and a most watchful and accurate 
observer; 'and a belief exists/ he adds, 'that 
unless some remedy be speedily adopted, the 



162 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

effects will be disastrous, morally, socially, and 
economically.' 

As to the benefit of near local inspection of 
cases, Mr. Ballingal says : ' I account for . . 
economy in the reduced areas by the increased 
supervision of the ratepayers, and narrower 
scrutiny on their part' 

' Previous to the alteration in 1845/ says Dr. 
Begg, who, with a wonderfully observant and 
penetrating mind, has had a wide experience in 
the management of Scottish parishes, — ' previous 
to the alteration in 1845, there were 7542 men 
giving their gratuitous assistance in the manage- 
ment of the poor, including ministers and elders, 
and others ; that is to say, an average of nearly 
eight in each parish in Scotland. . . . These 
men visited the poor ; and the truth is, that we 
knew every case of a poor person, . . . and they 
knew perfectly well that they could not impose 
upon us. ... I believe that that was one of the 
great secrets in the old system of administration, 
that ordinarily they did not attempt to impose 
upon us/ 

On the ready zeal of voluntary agents, Dr. 
Wood says : ' I would not answer theoretically, 



HOW TO ORGANIZE LARGE CITIES. 163 

— ^— - -■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ■ ■ ^ ^ — — ^■■■■■ M _^^^— ^^— ^ M » 

but appeal to experience. I would appeal first 
to the experience of Dr. Chalmers, when he 
found that there was not the slightest difficulty 
in getting visitors. I would appeal to the ex- 
perience in Elberfeld, where they find that there 
are more who offer themselves as volunteers than 
they have room to accept I would appeal to 
the experience in Paris, where they find the 
same. I would appeal to the experience in 
Dresden/ And as to the experience in the Edin- 
burgh Association, he testifies : ' We have up- 
wards of 1000 agents now at work, and very few 
have retired from the work ; and what has given 
us great encouragement about it is, that those 
who are working are always expressing more 
and more interest in it, and are getting more 
and more devoted to it.' 




■yjiZtS)/. 



XIII. 



THE CITY OF GOD. 




HE great Christian heroes of all time, 
from their different points of view, 
and with very different aims and 
objects — Augustin, Hildebrand, Bernard, Calvin, 
Knox, and, within our own century, Arnold 
of Rugby — have all wished and longed and 
laboured, not only for the salvation of indivi- 
dual souls, but for some higher state of general 
society; where truth shall guide the actions of 
men, justice and love banish grasping selfish- 
ness ; where the pure heart and the innocent 
life shall bring a pleasure unknown to pride 
and sensuality; where war and tyranny shall 
only be recollections of a barbarous past; 
where peace, and a more equalized comfort 
and happiness, shall bind men together in the 

164 



THE CITY OF GOD. 165 

faith and love of a common Father in heaven. 
This ideal social state, Augustin himself hath 
beautifully denominated ' The City of God/ 

No Christian hero ever longed and laboured 
more than Chalmers for the establishment of 
the City of God. From the first moment that 
he was himself entered a freeman of the City, 
his daily endeavour was to diffuse its celestial 
privileges as far and wide as his influence or 
example could penetrate. He was no dreamer, 
although petty, superficial people, who never 
performed a single fact all their lives, or 
understood a fact, will sneer at him as a 
dreamer, and not a man of facts. He was 
no dreamer, no speculatist ; he groaned over 
no imaginary evils ; he painted up no ficti- 
tious scenes of felicity. He was a mathema- 
tico-physicist, as we have said ; or, as he said 
of himself, he had the special faculties of a 
military engineer. His base of operations was 
always upon the solid earth ; he followed its 
configuration, adapted himself to its gradients, 
took advantage of every strong position, and 
out of the actual ascertained qualities of human 
nature, he would build up his City of God. He 



166 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

felt that the real welfare of men, of nations 
and communities, springs less from legislative 
or political, than from moral causes, — from 
causes, therefore, in their own power ; in short, 
from their own principles and conduct, their 
wisdom or folly, their self-control or their reck- 
less self-indulgence ; and from their mutual 
bearing towards one another, whether in the 
spirit of love, or the spirit of hatred or of in- 
difference. The first thing to seek, therefore, 
is the welfare of the great preponderating mass, 
that is, the poor — the millions ; for if they are 
faring well, society in general will be sound, 
comfortable, and secure ; if they are faring ill, 
society will be diseased, and tending to some 
fatal catastrophe. The bane of modern arti- 
ficial society (what makes it the city of the devil 
and not of God), is the separation and hostility 
of classes : the poor, especially in large towns, 
left aside as outcasts; the rich holding aloof 
in dangerous isolation and grandeur — objects 
of envy when their mountain stands strong — 
targets of revolution when their mountain is 
shaken by any convulsion from beneath. 
Fifty years ago, especially, — when Government, 



THE CITY OF GOD. 167 

aristocracy, plutocracy, privileged clergy, seemed 
to vie with each other in the neglect of the 
poorer classes, — Chalmers, conservative as he 
was in his instincts, and deliberate and careful 
before he vented the language of denunciation, 
was sometimes roused into a sacred fury, that 
rolled through the concave like the woes pro- 
nounced by Isaiah or Ezekiel ! 

' There are times which call for the intrepidity 
of an old prophet ; and whether in dealing with 
the high or low, it should be alike freely and 
alike fearlessly with both. The poor, on the 
one hand, must bear to be told that they do 
very ill ; but not without telling the rich, on 
the other, that they have done much worse. 
The truth is, that the greatest palliation for 
the misconduct of the poor, for their reckless- 
ness, for their ruinous squanderings, their low and 
loathsome dissipations, is the cruel neglect and 
abandonment of them by the upper ranks of 
society. It is chiefly in towns where the greatest 
moral injustice has been done to them: aban- 
doned wholesale to ignorance and vice; dis- 
possessed of all their moral privileges, whether 
in schools for their young, or in churches fop 



168 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

their general population ; spoiled of their paro- 
chial inheritance, which had come down from 
their forefathers, by a griping magistracy, who 
have seized on their places in the house of God, 
and thus made merchandise of their souls to 
the highest bidder. . . . No wonder that, thus 
driven from the ordinances of the gospel, and 
abandoned to Sabbath profanation, a general 
week-day profligacy should have followed in 
its train; and that families, thus made worth- 
less, should have soon become wretched ; and 
that filth and poverty and physical abomina- 
tions should have accumulated in all plebeian 
quarters of the town, whose inhabitants, lite- 
rally cast off by their superiors, with whom they 
were wont to have associated as fellow-wor- 
shippers in the temple of their God, have sunk 
beneath the level of our common humanity/ 

The separate and hostile classes must be 
brought together, not by a mere vague general 
sentiment of goodwill, but by the warm ties 
of a local and individual connection. Every 
man, the poorest, must find himself in a territory 
— the spot of his special affections, where the 
influences of religion and education and friendly 



THE CITY OF GOD. 169 

intercommunion must be brought nigh to every 
door. The poor will feel themselves raised in 
the social scale ; will be aided, when aid is 
needed, by private and cordial and ungrudging 
beneficence; a slothful or vicious pauperism 
will gradually be extinguished ; the labourers, 
by foresight, self-restraint, and frugality, will 
command a larger share in the fruits of pro- 
duction, and may rise to a comfort and com- 
petency indefinite. And, as a reconciliation is 
thus growing between man and man, the pre- 
sent outcast population will be softened in their 
hearts, and prepared to listen more willingly 
to the ambassador for Christ, when he beseeches 
the most hardened to enter also into a recon- 
ciliation with God. 

Fortified by his experience at Glasgow, which 
had confirmed and developed the theories of 
earlier years, Chalmers virtually consecrated 
the remainder of his life (upwards of twenty 
years) to the building of this City of God, or 
to the training of a fresh generation of builders. 
His enterprise was carried out in two forms: 
first, that of Parochial Extension, until not 
one individual should be an outcast, except of 



170 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

his own perversity ; second, that of the Extinc- 
tion of Pauperism, through the improved 
habits of the poor, and the considerate brother- 
liness of the rich. 

He made the most astonishing progress ; 
but, like all heroes, had his combats and dis- 
asters; and, like Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem, 
had often to build with 'his sword girded by 
his side.' He had first of all to bear the brunt 
of the Voluntary controversy, which would 
sweep away the whole materials with which 
he was building ; and, when that onset was 
slackened, he was paralyzed by the Disruption 
when his workmen were scattered hither and 
thither, taken away for other pressing exi- 
gencies, and the building of the glorious City 
was suspended in the violences and retaliations 
of an intestine war. 



XIV. 



THE PROFESSOR. 




'URING these hard-working years in 
Glasgow, however, we find him, as we 
have noticed at all stages of his busy 
career, partaking of his full share of domestic 
and social enjoyments— of trips and tours and 
seasons of relaxation. He was a thorough 
economist of time, and did everything with a 
will ; so that, whilst ever attentive to his duties, 
he had his spare days, sometimes spare weeks, 
which he generally employed in travelling to 
new scenes, thus adding to health, to the number 
of acquaintances, and to his stock of knowledge 
and experience. In the course of time, tethered 
though he was, he could boast of having visited 
almost every county in England, all in Scotland 
save one, besides excursions into Ireland, and, 

171 



172 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

finally, a voyage to France. We can do nothing 
but glance hurriedly at these side-movements — 
merely indicate them, as throwing light on the 
versatility of his character, and the activity and 
cheerfulness of his disposition. 

He was twice in London during this Glasgow 
time : in 1817, when he preached the mission- 
ary sermon in Rowland Hill's; and again in 
1822. On both occasions he was the guest 
and favourite of all that was highest and 
best and most illustrious in society. But this 
profuse attention never elates him ; his heart is 
always at home, or turning to the great objects 
of his life, or chastening itself into humility 
before God. To take a few instances. After 
all the incense offered up to him in London, 
and through England, he writes to his beloved 
sister Jane, at Pudhill in Gloucestershire: 'The 
places and the people we have passed are so 
manifold, that I have but a dazzling and in- 
distinct remembrance of the whole ; and can 
only say, that the Pudhill fortnight is the 
period of our journey to which I look back 
with the truest satisfaction. ... I cannot tell 
you how much my visit to Gloucestershire 



THE PROFESSOR. 173 



has refreshed and renewed and deepened all 
my former attachment to you.' On returning 
from his journeys, what revels he used to hold 
with the little ones ! ' The children were 
upstairs/ he writes on one of these occasions, 
' while I settled with the porter in the lobby, 
and went afterwards to my own bedroom. I 
heard them come down in a very gleesome 
style ; but they had to wait in the lobby till I 
came out, which when I did, they positively 
quivered and danced with pure gladness. I 
felt the cat and kitten principle most power- 
fully towards them, and spent a very joyous 
and thankful hour with them.' He has also 
begun, when absent, to write letters to some 
of his children, that remind one of Luther's 
quaint and pretty and sweet-hearted letters 
to his ' little Johnnie.' But the cat is often 
teased by the kitten ; so good papas must bear 
the penalty of their lavish endearments. For 
at another time he laughingly lodges a com- 
plaint in writing to their mother : ' Was greatly 
fashed with the restlessness of the bairns upon 
the sofa — at one time pressing in between me 
and the back of it ; at another, standing upright 



174 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and coming suddenly down upon me ; at a 
third, sitting upon its elevated border and re- 
peating this threatening position, forgetful of 
all my biddings upon the subject, and, in fact, 
putting me into a perfect fry with their most 
incessant and ungovernable locomotion.' Then, 
in a different, a deeply-subdued mood, after 
returning from one of his periods of travel and 
ovation, he thus unbosoms his feelings of holy 
fear and watchfulness to his sister Jane : * I 
have reason to pray and to strive lest the busy 
routine of operations should altogether secu- 
larize me. It is a withering world, — a dry and 
a thirsty land where no water is, — a place of 
exile from the fountain of life and light that 
is laid up in the Divinity/ 

The family, who had long been spared any 
bereavement, lost their venerable head in the 
summer of 1818. The old man sank rapidly, 
but quietly, under paralysis and a gentle decay. 
Many of the members of the family were around 
him ; and he had the ineffable satisfaction of 
receiving the last consolations of the faith from 
that son, once the cause of much anxiety, but 
for many years the object of so much delight 



THE PROFESSOR. 175 

and love. Decaying away, but suffering no 
pain, sleeping, then looking up and smiling 
dimly, he was truly becoming a little child, 
meet for the kingdom of heaven ; and the last 
words heard from him were the sick child's 
whisper to comfort its mother : ' I'll maybe be 
better the morn!' He died at early morning 
of Sabbath ; and Thomas thus announces the 
death to Jane : ' It is truly affecting when the 
thought of former Sabbaths in Anster presents 
itself to my mind, and I think of it as the day 
he loved ; and how the ringing of the bells 
was ever to him the note of joyful invitation 
to the house of God. . . . My dear father is 
lovely in death. There is all the mildness of 
heaven upon his aged countenance. My mother 
bears up to the great satisfaction of us all. 
She sits much in the room where the venerable 
remains are lying.' 

In 1823 the chair of Moral Philosophy at St. 
Andrews became vacant ; it was spontaneously 
and unanimously offered to Chalmers. Could 
he accept it ? Could he withdraw himself from 
the scene of wide-spread usefulness which had 
opened before him in Glasgow ? Could he 



176 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

forsake that band of generous friends who had 
heaped upon him such tokens of attachment ? 
who had placed at his command at all times 
their services and their purses ? Could he tear 
himself from a congregation that so deeply 
reverenced him, and so eagerly drank from his 
lips the words of divine instruction and reproof 
and consolation ? Could he, above all, desert 
his body-guard of agents, who, in the lanes and 
dens of the city, were the active instruments 
for realizing his ideals of local superintendence 
and social improvement? These were bitter 
questions. On the other hand, the eight years 
of stern, unremitting work at Glasgow, if it had 
not seriously affected his health, was now at 
length weighing down his energies, and weaken- 
ing the composure and collectedness of his 
mind. His early, and his long-continued ambi- 
tion, besides, had been to be a professor in one 
of the Universities. He had much of the pro- 
fessorial bent and habit ; he had little pleasure 
in the buzz of popularity, and would prefer, at 
any time, the approbation of one judicious and 
instructed mind, to the loudest acclamations of 
an excitable multitude. He felt also that in 



THE PROFESSOR. 177 



Glasgow he had sufficiently expounded all his 
views, and impressed them with the stamp of 
incontestable experience ; that the time had 
arrived when other and fresher men might enter 
into his labours; and that he could now be 
more usefully employed at the fountainhead 
of thought, in filling the souls of those young 
men who, in their various avocations and pro- 
fessions, would have the moulding of future 
generations. 

The latter arguments prevailed, and he ac- 
cepted the chair. 

He entered upon his duties at St. Andrews 
in session 1823-4. Now commenced his long 
career as professor, extending over twenty-three 
years, terminating only with his death. In 
1828 he was elected Professor of Theology in 
the University of Edinburgh, a position which 
he held till the Disruption, in 1843. Imme- 
diately after that event, he resigned his chair 
at the University, and accepted the appoint- 
ment of Principal and Primarius Professor of 
Theology in the Free Church College. 

I will not venture upon an examination of his 

teachings in ethics or in theology. The present 

M 



I7» THOMAS CHALMERS. 



STUDY is rather directed to his actions, and to 
the impress which he gave to public events, 
than to his speculations and doctrines. Be- 
sides, to discuss his opinions as a professor, 
or fix his grade as a philosopher or theologian, 
would require more space than we have here 
to bestow, and more technical learning than 
we possess. Those who are competent to judge 
agree in this verdict, that he cannot be said 
to have added anything new to the body of 
speculative or theological thought ; but still he 
had conspicuous merits, which must ever raise 
him high amongst the masters of youth. 

Whatever he undertook, he brought into its 
service that constitutional intensity of which 
we have so frequently spoken; which at once 
illuminated his own area of knowledge, and 
projected it into the minds of others with a 
definiteness and living effect, which the mere 
formal professor never can reach, whatever be 
the extent and profundity of his acquirements. 
It is like the difference between a region of 
country presented to the eye by a land surveyor 
and by a landscape painter. That this was so 
in the lectures of Chalmers, is shown by innu- 



THE PROFESSOR. 179 

merable testimonies. Thus one of his students 
in St Andrews, who had also been under that 
very diligent and successful teacher, Professor 
Jardine of Glasgow, describes how Chalmers, 
'in a few emphatic and impassioned sentences, 
... set before us the whole philosophy of a 
subject, and that in so compact and portable 
a form, that it was transferred, not only to our 
note-books, but lodged for life in our minds, 
under the triple guardianship of the under- 
standing, the imagination, and the heart/ His 
singularly realistic power — the magic by which 
he could make the ear see (as the Arabians say) 
— is admirably expressed in an account given of 
his first theological lecture in the University of 
Edinburgh. ' To this hour I dwell with all the 
mysterious delight that is awakened by some 
grand choral symphony, on some of his novel 
expressions, which, borrowed from physical 
science, directly tended, by almost more than 
the force of the best diagrams, to make his noble 
thoughts all our own.' He was purely con- 
scientious, amazingly industrious, made himself 
master of the literature of his subjects, and 
trusted nothing to the mere attractions of his 



ifc> THOMAS CHALMERS. 

eloquence. But, after all, the unequalled value 
of his teachings lay in this — in his intense real- 
ism, by which the truths of philosophy and 
theology came bodily before the eyes of the 
students, ' by more than the force of the best 
diagrams.' 

If he had not the originality, often more 
showy than real, of knocking down all the 
structures of his predecessors, and running up 
some new lath and plaster of his own instead, 
he had that genuine originality as a professor, 
which Stuart Mill has ascribed to him as an 
economist : ' always the merit of studying phe- 
nomena at first hand, and expressing them in 
a language of his own/ He might receive the 
first suggestions from outer sources — from the 
traditions in which he had been brought up, or 
from favourite authors, such as Butler and 
Edwards ; but these mere suggestions were 
all submitted to a complete process of diges- 
tion ; they were all assimilated to his own 
nature ; and came out, if not changed, at least 
specialized. They were not paint taken from 
Butler or Edwards, but the living flesh and 
colour of Thomas Chalmers. His moral and 



THE PROFESSOR. 181 



theological works, — especially the latest of 
them, his Institutes of Theology, — if they want 
the dash of innovation and paradox, have all 
the solidity and natural glow of individualism. 

• 

He was a slow thinker, as we have said. : 
wherever the suggestions- might come- from, 
he meditated over them long and deeply ; 
and before he uttered them, they were bone 
of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and jets of his 
heart's blood. Hence the overwhelming vita- 
lity of his utterance. Hence, also, there was 
always a something peculiar in the views of 
Chalmers, — for instance, on the mysterious 
process in a soul drawing nigh unto God and 
becoming the subject of His grace, — which did 
not altogether satisfy, what he termed with 
some amount of horror, ultra-orthodoxy. As 
life advanced, and the spirit bathed deeper and 
deeper in that communion with God which was 
first revealed to the world by the publication 
of his Journals, we can trace a more solemn 
humility, and also a more filial boldness, and 
more taking the mind of God from His own 
word than from the interpretations of men, who 
speak from many notions and for many pur- 



1 82 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

poses, often from sectarian bias and spiritual 
pride. No one who listens attentively to his 
later breathings, but must feel that that wonder- 
ful inner life with God, which he lived during 
his last years, was not only steeping his affec- 
tions in a heavenly peace, but was also simpli- 
fying and elevating his intellectual apprehension 
of the truths of religion. Hear some of these 
secret breathings. 

'Set me loose from the influence of human 
authority, in so far as it distorts or diverts or 
deafens the direct impression of Thine own 
word upon my conscience. Let me call none 
Master but Christ ; and aid me, Almighty 
Father! in the work of teaching others, that 
I may not mislead them into error, but rather 
enable me to disperse and clear away any 
darkening medium which may now lie between 
their souls and that Bible which is the alone 
lamp unto our feet, and light unto our path/ 

' Let me not be the slave of human authority, 
but clear my way through all creeds and con- 
fessions to Thine own original revelation.' 

' Deliver me from the narrowing influence of 
human lessons, and more especially of human 



THE PROFESSOR. 183 

systems of theology. Teach me directly out 
of the fulness and freeness of Thine own word. 

'Let Thy Bible, O God! be henceforward 
my supreme directory ; nor let me incur the 
condemnation of those who either add to its 
words, or take away from them.' 

But his power as a professor sprung, above 
all, from that influence over his students, which 
we can only express by the occult quality of 
fascination. He was of the rare order whose 
students are their children ; who draw to them- 
selves that young love which is above the love 
of women ; and, by some magnetic power, bring 
the youths flocking to them from afar and from 
the ends of the earth. Himself always young, 
he had the Socratic eros about him — the 
divine love for youth, identifying them with 
truth and progress, which elicited their fondest 
regard in return. Modern Universities scarcely 
afford a parallel ; one must go back to the at- 
tractions of an Abelard or a Ramus. The 
nearest was his own contemporary and fellow- 
academician, Sir William Hamilton, who diffused 
the same kind of spell ; but it wanted a certain 
celestial ingredient, — the love to Chalmers was 



1 84 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

also a Christian love. Many, perhaps most, were 
not his students only, but his spiritual children. 

One who has either sat at his feet, or mingled 
intimately among his disciples, testifies, in the 
North British Review of 1852, to the univer- 
sality and depth of this affection. 

'Scotland is now filled with men, and Eng- 
land has more than a few such, who are never 
weary in giving utterance to their feelings when 
they speak of those times of happy excitement 
which they spent in the moral philosophy or 
the theology class-room, while Dr. Chalmers 
held the mind and soul of all present in his 
powerful grasp. . . . Whether or not, as pro- 
fessor of moral philosophy or of theology, he 
has materially advanced sacred and ethical 
science, it is quite certain that from his chair 
he did render a service to his country which 
was incomparably of higher importance and 
value, inasmuch as he sent forth over its sur- 
face a body of men who, if they turn not aside 
from the path whereon he set them forward, 
may, and with God's help will, bring about . . . 
the Christian regeneration of Scotland.' 



^H& t$2 li$^ 


J J^> *<^T^''Y ,i ^T.^ <t cC i 



XV. 



INCIDENTS OF THE ST. ANDREW'S TIME. 




IS four years at St. Andrews was an 
interval of great quietness, — busy as 
regarded his professorial duties, but 
with few of those public engagements and 
distractions in which he had been so generally 
involved. It was a transition, a resting-place to 
gather breath and energy, in passing from the 
herculean achievements of his middle age to the 
almost tragical revolutions of his latter years. 

St Andrews, though historical, and celebrated 
as a city, was really a small place, with all the 
gossip and rivalries of small places. It was 
divided into its various University and official 
families — exclusive, prim, and jealous; and it 
was in many other ways uncongenial to him, 
for, as he writes at the time, ' Perhaps there is 

185 



186 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

no town in Scotland more cold and meagre 
and moderate in its theology than St Andrews/ 
Yet the families y forgetting his youthful colli- 
sions when he would force his mathematics and 
chemistry upon them at the point of the bayonet, 
received him very graciously; the great world 
had been smiling upon him, and therefore St. 
Andrews smiled too. He was the favourite of 
society, the lion of the place ; students were 
flocking to him even from foreign countries; and 
illustrious strangers, before visiting the cathedral, 
must first be introduced to Dr. Chalmers. He 
thus communicates his pleasurable sensations to 
a Glasgow lady friend: 'I am in great health 
and physical comfort in St Andrews. ... I am 
positively at this moment, and have been for 
many weeks, in the feeling of a most delicious 
repose. I know well, at the same time, that 
this may alienate from God ; and that health, 
and friendship, and the enjoyment of old 
associations, and congenial literature, and ani- 
mating success in labours which are light 
and exhilarating — that these may take pos- 
session of the heart as so many idols, and 
bring it altogether under the power of un- 



INCIDENTS OF THE ST. ANDREWS TIME. 187 

godliness. Do let me have an interest in your 
prayers.' 

When he got free from restraint, he had all 
the gaiety and playfulness of a boy ; he had 
been long in harness at Glasgow, and now scam- 
pered at large in the full enjoyment of his liberty. 
He was laying in stores of health, in games at 
golf upon the Links, and long rambles on the 
coast He had a frame of adamant, that bade 
defiance to weather, and that actually exulted in 
the wildness of the blast Everybody knows what 
the east wind is, in spring or autumn, upon the 
east coast — fell, and nipping, and gnawing at 
the heart-strings like a vulture. Most people 
would rather stand the rack. Yet there are 
men of strong nerve and tough muscle and 
Norse vitality, who delight in it — like the 
Vikings of old, dashing into the storms of the 
northern sea with their black keels. Chalmers 
was a Norseman. A friend of mine met him 
one day careering along the sands of St 
Andrews whilst the east wind was hissing from 
the bay. He was without an upper coat, had 
a great staff in his hand, his chest expanded, 
and cheeks glowing deep like bronze. Passing 



1 88 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

in rapid strides, he ejaculated, with that husky, 
clanging voice of his, like that of a sea-bird, 
' Fine bracing east wind this !' My friend used 
to describe how this singular salutation im- 
pressed him with his powerful physique, his 
hardiness and elasticity. The east wind, which 
shrivels up others, was only a fine bracer to 
him! 

In his college holidays he was off to Glasgow 
and the West, to the Borders, and again to Lon- 
don. Everywhere the most boyish glee ! His 
Journal at this time is as good as a restorative 
to expel the vapours. It shows what a com- 
plete, full-made Man is, — with all the pores of 
humanity open, — with his 'time to weep, and 
his time to laugh ; his time to mourn, and his 
time to dance.' We cannot resist transferring a 
few touches from the Journals, as we have some- 
times done before, to relieve the sterner matter, 
and to indicate the genial common life that lay 
under his tremendous explosions and exertions 
— like the flowery spots, and the bright gushing 
rills, that are hid in the retirements of some vol- 
canic mountain. 

Being a punctual and voluminous correspon- 



INCIDENTS OF THE ST. ANDREWS TIME. 189 

dent, when he is away in the West, in the month 
of July, he is ever letter- writing to Mrs. Chalmers, 
and he never forgets the bairns. * I want each 
letter you receive from me to be signalized by 
a feast of strawberries to the children, on the 
day of its arrival. Therefore I expect that on 
Saturday, which will be the day of your receiv- 
ing this, these strawberries, with a competent 
quantity of cream and sugar, shall be given 
accordingly, and given from me, the papa of 
these said children, each and all of them being 
told that he is the donor of the same/ In 
returning from the West, he fell in somewhere 
with a jovial company of the St. Andrews 
professors — Dr. Nicoll, Dr. Hunter, Gillespie, 
and his own ' dear Tom Duncan/ now professor 
of mathematics. ' With all the convivialities of 
the West,' he moralizes, 'I have seen no such 
guzzling as to-day with my St. Andrews friends. 
. . . They are rare lads — these leeterati or 
caterati / . . . I got the large bedroom in which 
Mr. Duncan was the night before, and he had a 
closet with a small sofa-bed that communicated 
with the room . . . / like him' So next morn- 
ing, to give him sensible proofs of his liking: 



190 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

' Got up about eight ; went to Mr. Duncan's 
closet, and got behind him in his sofa-bed, where 
I had a good purchase for jamming him out, 
and did so accordingly/ Then, after this free- 
and-easy process of tumbling a friend out of his 
bed, he goes on quite composedly to record, 
' Had cordial talk with him.' When in Galloway, 
he made a pilgrimage to the manse of Kirkma- 
breck, where the gifted Thomas Brown, the 
metaphysician, was born, whose sun, alas ! went 
down at the noon of his powers and fame. 
Chalmers highly appreciated him, — all the more 
that he had been treading over the same ground 
in the moral philosophy class at St. Andrews ; 
and he paid this visit with a great feeling of 
seriousness and interest. But we shall see how 
his gravity was upset by his excessive percep- 
tion of the ludicrous. ' Was shown the room of 
his birth, and the place where his father recited 
his sermons in a wood at the back of his garden, 
behind which there was also shown to me a 
place where the children used to roast potatoes. 
It seems that Dr. Brown, in his last visit to the 
manse, was shown all these localities, and was 
thrown into a flood of sensibility therewith; 



INCIDENTS OF THE ST ANDREW'S TIME. 191 

and I was in a very grave and pathetic mood 
myself when surveying all these classic and in- 
teresting remains, when Sibbald (the minister 
of Kirkmabreck), who is a great droll, put the 
whole to flight by telling me, in a very odd 
way, that Dr. Brown's cousin was with him, 
who, unable to comprehend or sympathize with 
this whole process of weeping and sobbing, 
asked him in a very gruff way, " What are ye 
makin' sic a wark aboot, man ?" The incon- 
gruity of the one man's speech with the other 
man's sentimentalism threw me into immo- 
derate peals of laughter, which really disturbed 
and discomposed the whole proper effect of 
my visit* 

On repairing to London, in the spring of 
1827, when there was talk about calling him 
to the chair of Moral Philosophy in London 
University, he met with all the usual distin- 
guished attentions from the members of Govern- 
ment and of Parliament, bishops and earls, and 
all the rest The most curious scene, however, 
was a visit to Coleridge, who was then living 
with the Gilmans at Highgate ; he was accom- 
panied by Edward Irving and some other 



192 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

literary friends. What a picture does his 
account of the interview present, of a certain 
kind of reverence, but of the want of any 
common understanding between the two great 
minds, — 'alike, yet, ah! how different!' — the 
mystic and the positivist 

' We spent three hours with the great Cole- 
ridge. He lives with Dr. and Mrs. Gilman on 
the same footing that Cowper did with the 
Unwins. His conversation, which flowed in a 
mighty, unremitting stream, is most astonishing, 
but, I must confess, to me still unintelligible. 
I caught occasional glimpses of what he would 
be at ; but mainly he was very far out of all 
sight and all sympathy. . , . You know that 
Irving sits at his feet, and drinks in the in- 
spiration of every syllable that falls from him. 
There is a secret and, to me as yet, unintelli- 
gible communion of spirit betwixt them, on 
the ground of a certain German mysticism and 
transcendental lake poetry, which I am not yet 
up to. Gordon ' (that was the truthful yet gentle 
Robert Gordon, then the most popular of the 
Edinburgh ministers, a man of mathematical 
and positive head like Chalmers), — 'Gordon 



INCIDENTS OF THE ST. ANDREW'S TIME. 193 

says, it is all "unintelligible nonsense;" and 
I am sure a plain Fife man as Uncle Tammas ' 
(old Thomas Ballardie, who tried to begin him 
in mathematics), 'had he been alive, would have 
pronounced it the greatest duff he had ever heard 
in his life.' 

In all seasons — bright as well as dark, 
whether rambling or strenuously at work, amid 
opposition or flattery — he retained the same un- 
varying composure of mind, the same sincerity, 
simplicity, and benevolence. We have a very 
careful portraiture of him, sketched at this time 
by the experienced and picturesque hand of 
Mrs. Grant of Laggan, — a portraiture which 
might equally be applied to any period of his 
mature life, so uniform were the lineaments. 

'You ask me to tell you about Dr. Chalmers, 
I must tell you first, then, that of all men 
he is the most mbdest, and speaks with undis- 
sembled gentleness and liberality of those who 
differ from him in opinion. Every word he says 
has the stamp of genius ; yet the calmness, ease, 
and simplicity of his conversation is such that 
to ordinary minds he might appear an ordinary 
man. I had a great intellectual feast about 

N 



194 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

three weeks since. I breakfasted with him at 
a friend's house, and enjoyed his society for two 
hours with great delight Conversation wan- 
dered into various channels ; but he was always 
powerful, always gentle, and always seemed quite 
unconscious of his own superiority. I had not 
been an hour at home when a guest arrived 
who had become a stranger to me for some time 
past It was Walter Scott, who sat a long time 
with me, and was, as he always is, delightful 
His good nature, good humour, and simplicity, 
are truly charming. You never once think of 
his superiority, because it is evident he does 
not think of it himself. He, too, confirmed the 
maxim, that true genius is ever modest and 
careless. After his greatest literary triumphs, 
he is like Hardyknute's son after a victory, 
when, we are told, 

" With careless gesture, mind unmoved, 
On rode he o'er the plain." 

Mary and I could not help observing certain 
similarities between these two extraordinary 
persons (Chalmers and Scott) : the same quiet, 
unobtrusive humour, the same flow of rich, 
original conversation, — easy, careless, and visibly 



INCIDENTS OF THE ST. ANDREW'S TIME. 195 

unpremeditated ; the same indulgence for others, 
and readiness to give attention and interest to 
any subject started by others. There was a 
more chastened dignity and occasional elevation 
in the divine than in the poet ; but many re- 
sembling features in' their modes of thinking 
and manner of expression/ 

And now, when in his forty-seventh year, the 
'old things' of his Anster home were entirely to 
pass away. His mother died in the month of 
February 1827. We have already had to speak 
of her, both in appearance and in character. 
She had been living truth, and living diligence, 
and living rectitude ; at first, just and exact, 
rather than outwardly pleasing. But the loss of 
her husband, her comparative retirement from 
the business of the world, the even tenor of her 
way, intercourse with her great son, the diffusive 
influence of her deep-implanted piety, — all had 
been softening her into a tranquil meekness, and 
into more of the outward display of kindness and 
affection. Thomas was with her through her last 
illness, as he had been with his father ; but she 
never sank into the father's feebleness and decay; 
her mind was stedfast in death as in life. Her 



196 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

son's memorials of her last hours are grandly 
solemn. How far beyond the scenes of the 
dramatist, or the tenderest imaginings of the 
poetl Look to these mingling tints, soft and 
rich as the disappearing gleams of the rainbow : 

'About half an hour before her death, she 
audibly ordered the curtains to be drawn aside, 
and the shutters opened, , 

' Let me not forget the look which she cast 
upon me, when I lifted her into a sitting posture. 

' After being adjusted to sit, she said audibly 
that it was fine, — " That's fine ! " 

' One of her latest articulations was, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit ! " ' 



>i(fl^k 





XVI. 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 




[BOUT the time that Chalmers entered 
upon the chair of Theology in Edin- 
burgh, 1828, there were unmistake- 
able symptoms of a total break-up of the old 
George-the- Third Toryism. Canning had already 
cut all connection with the blasphemous ' Holy 
Alliance ' of the continental despots ; he had 
breathed a more generous spirit into our foreign 
policy ; shown a disposition, whilst avoiding the 
extremities of war, to befriend the weaker nation- 
alities against their overbearing neighbours ; and 
he had * called the new world into existence/ 
as he proudly though somewhat prematurely 
boasted, ' to redress the balance of the old.' 
His skilful and far-sighted coadjutor, Huskisson, 

197 



198 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

so far as prejudices and circumstances would 
allow, had been throwing off the trammels of 
monopoly ; been giving fuller scope to the play 
of industry and commerce ; been, in fact, antici- 
pating the triumphs of Free Trade. In this very 
1828 and 1829, the two strongest ramparts of 
ancient Toryism were carried by storm and 
levelled in the dust — I mean, the civil and 
political disqualifications of the Dissenters in 
England, and of the Roman Catholics through- 
out Britain and Ireland. After a sleep of half a 
century, disturbed only by fitful mutterings and 
convulsive starts, the British people — the middle 
and literary and industrial classes — were awaken- 
ing to a sense of their strength, and a deter- 
mination to make that strength be felt in the 
highest places of the Old Oligardiy. 

Chalmers, always the friend of practical re- 
forms as distinguished from organic convulsions, 
came forward boldly in the General Assembly 
of 1828, and moved, though he was not able to 
carry, an address of congratulation to the Crown 
on the emancipation of the Dissenters ; and, in 
one of the most memorable public meetings ever 
held in Edinburgh, in March 1829, he pleaded 



POLITICAL DEVOLUTION. 199 

for a similar relief to the Roman Catholics — a 
cause which he had advocated from his youth, 
in the face of the popular odium at that time, 
and of still prevailing religious scruples and 
apprehensions. 

It so happened that I was present at this 
latter meeting, in favour of the Roman Catholic 
emancipation ; and the whole scene and inci- 
dents are as recent in my memory as if they 
had only happened yesterday. It was my first 
session at College, and I need not say how eager 
the youthful student is, when he comes fresh 
from the country into the great city, to see all 
the celebrated men, and be present at all notable 
meetings and spectacles. According to my re- 
collection, it was a raw, damp forenoon, that 14th 
of March, in ' the grey metropolis of the north.' 
The meeting was to be about mid-day; but long 
before the hour, thousands were pressing thick 
around the entrance of the hall in George Street 
There were only men, but they were of all ages* 
from the stripling at College, like myself, to the 
grey-headed citizen. They were very good- 
natured, joking and bantering in the manner of 
crowds ; but there was a great deal of intelli- 



2oo THOMAS CHALMERS. 

gent conversation ; there was some diversity 
of opinion, but no violence. The Whigs pre- 
dominated, from their shops and offices in the 
High Street and the Bridges ; and were all in a 
chuckle to see old Scotch Toryism, that once 
held 'the crown of the causey/ now tottering 
to its fall. There were glowing anticipations 
of the meeting, — an undisguised feeling of pride, 
that Edinburgh could turn out upon the plat- 
form such a cluster of eminent and really influ- 
ential men. After more than an hour's waiting 
out in the harr, which had been passed with 
wonderful patience, the doors were flung open. 
I need not describe the series of purgatorial 
sensations, the tremendous heave, the headlong 
rush, the ground-swells that bear the helpless 
individual hither and thither, the last fell 
squeeze, the grind of the mill as we pass 
through, then the tumble out into the un- 
known, the wild hurried look round to catch our 
bearings, and, finally, the desperate scramble 
for some place of refuge and observation. We 
outsiders found, to our disgust, that the body of 
the hall had been packed beforehand ; and for 
a while we made a hearty use of the mob's 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 201 

privilege, to groan, and hiss, and cry, ' Shame ! 
shame T But many of the favoured ones were 
ladies ; so, from a motive of gallantry, I suppose, 
as well as because we had a vast extent of 
back-settlement to occupy, good-humour re- 
turned. We got into such places as we could, 
and the surging multitudes subsided by degrees 
into order, and at length into the hush of ex- 
pectancy. My own position was a most un- 
toward one. I was thrown back under the 
gallery amid a mass of strong grown-up men, 
who had no pity for my tender years. Instead 
of sitting down, they all sprang up and stood 
on the seats. I had to imitate their example ; 
but, in the pressure, I had to stride, and plant 
one foot on one seat, the other on another, 
and would soon have tumbled, but that I was 
wedged in by the dense crowd round about me. 
Anon I was shut out from the light of this 
world ; a fat old man behind me, eighteen 
stones at least, laid his whole weight upon my 
back ; to obtain purchase to bear up such a 
load, I h&d to push my head into the back 
of the person in front of me ; whilst another 
at my side, wishing to be relieved of his hat, 



202 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

placed it over the top of my head. This was 
my position for the whole three or four hours, — 
crushed, blinded, stretched on a rack, suffocated 
in a living tomb, with nothing to support me 
but my neighbours jamming in opposite direc- 
tions. After sinking for a while into a death- 
like stupor, in which all remembrance seems 
to have been lost, I was roused by a loud con- 
fused hum : ' They're coming — no — yes — there 
they are — that's hurrah! hurrah!' — long- 
continued shouting, which ended in clapping of 
hands, knocking with feet, and other customary 
demonstrations of public rejoicing, all of which 
fell upon some part of my devoted person. 
' That's Jeffrey — there's Chalmers !' — everybody 
cried, and everybody rose on tip-toe to see ; 
but, alas! my eyes were buried in one neigh- 
bour's back, whilst another's hat lay like a sod 
over my head, so that my mind, deprived of 
the external medium of sight, could only enter- 
tain itself with imaginary spectra of Francis 
Jeffrey and Thomas Chalmers. Fortunately, 
my ears were free, and they were as quick as 
youth and eager attention could make them. 
The first thing I remember was Jeffrey, — 



POLITICAL RE VOL UTION. 203 

with his high, sharp, penetrating accent, — with 
some affectations of pronunciation and phrase, 
yet he delivered a fine fluent discourse, that 
carried the audience pleasantly along with him. 
I have brought nothing away, however, but one 
of his felicities of expression, when referring to 
the measure having been brought in by the 
Tories, and not by his own party, that he had 
had some difficulty to 'purge the leaven of 
Whiggism out of him/ but that he could now 
honestly participate in the general satisfaction. 
Then followed Sir James, afterwards Lord Mon- 
creiff, with harsh but masculine utterance, con- 
ducting what I only remember as a vigorous 
forensic argument. Then Harry Cockburn, 
with his bland, homely voice, raising a laugh 
now and then by his pleasantries, and at times 
affecting the audience by 3 flow of simple, 
natural eloquence. 

But my limbs were now fairly giving way 
under the Ossa of flesh that was piled above 
me ; and, blind as the Titan, I was seized with 
some of his fury, and thought to end my pains 
by wildly jostling right and left into the ribs 
of my neighbours, who had been holding me 



204 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

down for hours in this loathsome cavern. My 
struggles were no more to the huge party 
above me, than would be the stirrings of a 
field-mouse under the limbs of a superincum- 
bent ox. Feeling my little convulsive twitch- 
ings below him, he kindly patted me on the 
shoulder, saying, 'My man, we must bear one 
another's burdens here!' in which maxim I 
would readily have agreed, if there had been 
any reciprocity. 

In dumb and callous despair I yielded to 
my fate; and had no idea left but a low, 
feverish anxiety that this meeting — this burden 
— this misery were at an end. 

But whence these symptoms of a strange, 
unusual emotion in the assembly? I am con- 
scious of them, even in my enforced blindness 
and isolation. A power is rising ! — what ? who ? 
First there was a hush, as if breath and move- 
ment had suddenly stopped ; then people started 
to their feet; then there was a shout, a long, 
piercing shout, as of passionate triumph, which 
made my young temples throb, and — 'Chal- 
mers! Chalmers!' was on every tongue. Am 
I then to listen, for the first time, to the orator 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 205 

whose periods I have so often recited with 
boyish rapture? whose fame has travelled be- 
yond his own land (rare now with preachers!) 
and has become European, like Bossuet and 
Jeremy Taylor ? The palpitations of my heart 
nearly drowned my hearing; weariness, weak- 
ness, pain were forgotten ; even the blindness 
in which I stood ceased to be a privation ; if 
I could not see him, I now heard with thrilling 
intensity every vibration, even the lightest that 
floated upon the air. Every one can feel how 
the ardent youth is entranced, is rapt, when he 
first comes into actual contact with the great 
man, the idol of his dreams. 

' Hush ! hush !' — and all was still. 

At first, — let me own the first shock of dis- 
appointment that all have felt who ever heard 
him,— at first, from the far extremity of the 
room, there was a succession of guttural con- 
fused sounds, which I could not distinctly in- 
terpret into words ; then vague words were 
heard, which I could scarcely weave into any 
meaning. There must be some mistake. Could 
this be the mighty Chalmers ? Yet the people 
whose eyes were upon him, could be heard 



2o6 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



drawing in their breath, silent and expectant. 
Sentence now heaved forth after sentence, with 
a kind of ponderous difficulty ; yet there came 
ever and anon a reverberation, as of the vol- 
cano collecting the fiery materials of its dis- 
charge. The pitchy clouds dispersed; the 
showers of ashes were blown away, to my 
mind's eye (for my bodily eyes were shut in 
darkness) ; to my mind's eye the glare of an 
inward furnace shot forth ; the flames of the 
volcano descended. 

' How comes it that Protestantism made such 
triumphant progress in . these realms when it 
had pains and penalties to struggle with? and 
how came this progress to be arrested from the 
moment it laid on these pains and penalties in 
its turn? . . . How is it that, when single- 
handed, Truth walked through our island with 
the might and prowess of a conqueror: so 
soon as propped by the authority of the State, 
and the armour of intolerance was given to 
her, the brilliant career of her victories was 
ended? It was when she took up the carnal, 
and laid down the spiritual weapon — it was then 
that strength went out of her. She was struck 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 207 



with impotency on the instant that, from a war- 
fare of principle, it became a warfare of politics.' 

And now followed blaze after blaze, a suc- 
cession of the same noble thoughts, the same 
Christian maxims, the same flashing antitheses, 
the same bold images, standing out like statues 
against the sky, the same force of language 
clinching every idea upon the minds of the 
subjugated hearers. 

'We know the purpose of these disabilities. 
. . . They were intended as a line of circum- 
vallation around the strongholds of the Pro- 
testant faith; and in effect they have been a 
line of circumvallation around the strongholds 
of the Catholic faith. It is to force those now 
difficult and inaccessible strongholds that I want 
this wall of separation taken down. . . . Had 
we been suffered to mingle more extensively 
with our Catholic fellow-subjects, and to com- 
pany with them in the walks of civil and poli- 
tical business, there would at this day have 
been the transfusion of another feeling, — the 
breath of another spirit amongst them; nor 
should we have beheld, as now, the impractic- 
able countenance, the resolute and unyielding 



208 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

attitude, of our aggrieved and outcast popula- 
tion. ... It is since the admission of intoler- 
ance, that unseemly associate, within our camp, 
that the cause of the Reformation has come 
down from its vantage-ground ; and from the 
moment it wrested this engine from the hands 
of its adversaries, and began to wield and 
brandish it itself, from that moment it has 
been at a dead-stand. We want to be disen- 
cumbered of this weight, and to be restored 
thereby to our own free and proper energies. 
We want truth and force to be dissevered from 
each other, the moral and spiritual to be no 
longer implicated with the grossly physical. 
For never shall we prosper, and never shall we 
prevail in Ireland, till our cause be delivered 
from the outrage and the contamination of so 
unholy an alliance.' 

I felt as I never felt before, and never again 
under any other man. It was not mere argu- 
ment that swayed me; it was not mere elo- 
quence that roused me; it was something in- 
describable. I felt as if carried away, not by 
any human power, but by some great force of 
nature. It was not the youthful bosom only 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 209 

that was agitated ; blind as I was, I felt the 
people around me quivering with emotion. 
The whole assembly were catching the inspi- 
ration of the master: a strange afflatus filled 
the hall. Peal after peal, becoming almost 
ceaseless, not of applause — the word is too cold, 
but where is the word sufficiently glowing? — 
of profound spiritual sympathy, attested how 
completely every soul there was under the 
domination of the one mighty ruling mind. 

'What Sheridan said of the liberty of the 
press/ he exclaimed near the close, 'admits 
of most emphatic application to this religion 
of truth and liberty. " Give," says that great 
orator, "give to ministers a corrupt House of 
Commons ; give them a pliant and a servile 
House of Lords; give them the keys of the 
Treasury and the patronage of the Crown, — 
.and give me the liberty of the press; and 
with this mighty engine I will overthrow the 
fabric of corruption, and establish upon its 
ruins the rights and privileges of the people." 
In like manner, give the Catholics of Ireland 
their emancipation; give them a seat in the 
Parliament of their country ; give them a free 



210 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and equal participation in the politics of the 
realm ; give them a place at the right ear of 
majesty, and a voice in his councils, — and give 
me the circulation of the Bible ; and with this 
mighty engine I will overthrow the tyranny 
of Antichrist, and establish the fair and original 
form of Christianity on its ruins.' 

As a sudden springing breeze in the High- 
lands drives away the mists that all day long 
have shrouded the mountains, and in an in- 
stant reveals a Ben Lomond or a Ben More 
in all its rugged grandeur ; so a strong, rapid 
movement through all the auditory at the 
close of this passage opened up a vista through 
which, for the first time, I saw the marvellous 
orator. There he was, still standing in the 
attitude in which he had 'overthrown the 
tyranny of Antichrist ;' he was the impersona- 
tion of Truth, victorious in its own sublimity ; 
he was still grasping the great staff which he 
had brought down with vehemence upon the 
floor as the symbol of the ' mighty engine ' 
of overthrow ; and the immense audience rose 
to him, and shouted back and back for several 
minutes their unison in the lofty strain. 



r 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 211 

It is no exaggeration when Dean Ramsay 
describes the scene: — 'An excitement and en- 
thusiasm pervaded the large and closely crowded 
assemblage seldom witnessed in modern times. 
I heard our most distinguished Scottish critic 
(Lord Jeffrey), who was present on the occa- 
sion, give it as his deliberate opinion, that 
never had eloquence produced a greater effect 
upon a popular assembly ; and that he could 
not believe more had ever been done by the 
oratory of Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, or 
Sheridan.' 

The triumphs of religious emancipation in 
1828 and 1829, instead of satisfying, only 
stimulated the spirit of liberty in Britain. 
Startling events on the Continent soon added 
to the intensity of the excitement. In the 
'three days' of July 1830, the restored throne 
of the elder Bourbons — who had learned no- 
thing and forgotten nothing — was shattered to 
pieces, and a free constitutional monarchy, 
as was fondly supposed, under the Orleans 
dynasty, was raised in its stead. The rebound 
of this wonderful popular revolution was felt 
through all Europe. In our own country it 



212 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

took the form of a strenuous, irresistible demand 
for organic Parliamentary Reform. After a 
crisis that sometimes bordered on the excesses 
of revolution, this was conceded in 1832 ; and 
the fulcrum of governing power passed from a 
narrow exclusive oligarchy into the hands of 
the Middle Class. 

The agitations in politics quickly communi- 
cated themselves to religion, or rather to those 
matters which are connected with the external 
organization of the Church. This especially in 
Scotland, where in all ages ecclesiastical and 
political movements have acted and reacted in 
sympathy. Almost contemporaneous with Par- 
liamentary Reform, certain ecclesiastical move- 
ments commenced in Scotland, which shook the 
country for ten years, and whose consequences, 
mingling with many other causes, are affecting, 
and will long continue to affect, the whole eccle- 
siastical institutions in Britain. There was the 
wide-spread uprising against all Established 
Churches, — the crusade of Voluntaryism, — which 
for some years was most formidable, and threat- 
ened to engulph, as in a torrent, the cathedrals 
of England and Ireland as well as the humbler 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 213 

kirks of Scotland. Then, in Scotland, to save 
the Establishment, and strengthen and popu- 
larize it, there was, j?r.r/, a revival by Chalmers 
himself, but upon a national scale, of his pa- 
rochial or local system, under the name of 
CHURCH EXTENSION; and, second, an effort to 
improve and elevate the ministry of the Estab- 
lished Church by a modification of PATRON- 
AGE. Out of this double movement in the 
Scottish Establishment, by and by emerged a 
third form — the SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE of 
the Church, which soon swallowed up the other 
two, and almost the Church itself, and in which 
Chalmers became finally the leading champion. 
The Reform agitation, and the inordinate 
hopes which it excited in the minds of the 
middle and labouring classes, quickened the 
intention, which he had long entertained, of 
collecting into a systematic work his doctrines 
in Political Economy; the whole tendency of 
which was to repress any large expectations 
of benefit from exterior causes or legislative 
measures, and to point to a sound education, 
and its influence in teaching forethought and 
self-restraint, as the only means by which the 



214 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

labouring classes especially could be saved from 
want and misery, and raised to a condition of 
comfort, refinement, and social importance. By 
education, he meant not only instruction in 
letters and ordinary knowledge, but training 
in the principles and graces of the Christian 
life. 

He gave therefore to the world, in the begin- 
ning of 1832, the result of these long and 
patriotic studies, in his Political Economy, in 
connection with the Moral State and Moral 
Prospects of Society. 

A high eulogium has been pronounced on 
this work, and on the peculiar quality of his 
intellect, by one of our ablest thinkers, John 
Stuart Mill, whose approbation is the more to 
be valued because it is very sparingly and 
very discriminatingly bestowed. The eulogium 
has been previously alluded to, but I shall 
now quote the passage in full. Discussing the 
problem as to the speedy reparation of the 
capital of a country after any great catastrophe, 
— for example, the devastations of war, — Mill 
observes : 

4 So dangerous is the habit of thinking through 



POLITICAL RE VOLUTION. 2 1 5 

the medium of only one set of technical phrases, 
and so little reason have studious men to value 
themselves on being exempt from the very same 
mental infirmities which beset the vulgar, that 
this simple explanation was never given (so far 
as I am aware) by any political economist be- 
fore Dr. Chalmers — a writer, many of whose 
opinions I think erroneous, but who has always 
the merit of studying phenomena at first hand, 
and expressing them in a language of his own, 
which often uncovers aspects of the truth that 
the received phraseologies only tend to hide/ 

Chalmers had been struck, as every thought- 
ful man has been, with the theory of Malthus, 
which was first promulgated in 1798, but more 
completely developed in 1803 ; and the special 
attention which he had paid to the history, the 
evils, and the means for arresting pauperism, 
had confirmed him in attaching the most vital 
importance to these warnings on the dangers 
of a redundant population. That theory has 
nowhere been more briefly and emphatically 
put than in the following sentence of Professor 
Fawcett: — 'It is quite evident that population 
must be restrained by some checks ; for if all 



21 6 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

married when they arrived at maturity, this 
earth would not merely fail to feed, but would 
scarcely even offer standing-room for the countless 
millions that might be born ! ' Again : ' If . . . 
wages do not rise when the wealth and capital 
of the country increase, it is solely and entirely 
because an increase of population causes a greater 
supply of labour. The labourers cannot fully 
participate in the advantages of a growing na- 
tional prosperity unless population is, in some 
way or other, restrained/ According to Malthus, 
there are positive checks, such as the mortality 
arising from famine, disease, or the ravages of 
war. But there is also the preventive check, 
where the great majority of a people are re- 
strained from early marriages by feelings of 
prudence. Although many call in question the 
alleged dangers, or doubt whether it will ever 
come to be of any practical consequence ; yet 
the abstract truth of the law of population is in 
itself universally admitted. ' Twenty or thirty 
years ago/ says Stuart Mill, ' these propositions 
might still have required considerable enforce- 
ment and illustration ; but the evidence of them 
is so ample and incontestable that they have 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 217 

made their way against all kinds of opposition, 
and may now be regarded as axiomatic.' 

Chalmers, as was usual with him, seized hold 
of this central idea, and made it the hinge, 
to use Robert Hall's expression, by which he 
fastened his whole economic doctrines and pre- 
cepts. What was a thesis with Malthus was 
a mission to Chalmers ; and he threw into the 
inculcation of it the whole intensity of his mind. 
He thus depicts the irresistible law of popula- 
tion : — ' All agricultural and all commercial ex- 
pedients for the enlargement of human main- 
tenance have a necessary limit, beyond which, 
if the number of human beings overpass, or 
on which, if this number, with its powers and 
tendencies of indefinite augmentation, press in- 
conveniently, the inevitable effect must be a 
general destitution and discomfort throughout 
the mass of society.' He prescribes the pre- 
ventive remedy: — 'The more we elevate man 
into a reflective being, and inspire him with self- 
respect, and give him a demand for larger and 
more refined accommodations, and, in one word, 
raise his standard of enjoyment, the more will 
the important step of marriage become a matter 



218 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

of deliberation and delay/ Hence the priceless 
value of education to the labouring classes, not 
merely for the improvement of their minds, but 
for their preservation from indigence, woe, and 
wretchedness. ' The change will be accom- 
plished surely, though indirectly and by insen- 
sible progress, through the means of general 
instruction, or by the spread of common, and, 
more especially, of sound Christian education 
over the country. . . . We object not to the 
highest possible education of the peasantry; 
yet it is not to the lessons of the political, but 
to those of the moral and religious school, that 
we look for the best and speediest instruments of 
their economic wellbeing.' He illustrates the 
possibility of such habits of prudence and self- 
restraint becoming general, by the example of 
the Scottish peasantry of former times. ' It is 
thus that, half a century ago, in the lowlands of 
Scotland, the habit of a large preparation often 
required for its accomplishment the delay of 
years, after the virtuous attachment was formed. 
This habit was nearly universal among our well- 
schooled and well-ordered families. And so, 
though poverty was not unknown, yet pauper- 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 219 

ism was unknown ; and notwithstanding the 
general barrenness of our soil, did the moral 
prevail over the physical causes, and uphold 
within our borders an erect and independent 
peasantry.' He presses upon the labouring 
classes how, by the due exercise of self-restraint, 
they have the labour market absolutely under 
their own power. ' They are on high vantage- 
ground, if they but knew it ; and it is the fondest 
wish of every enlightened philanthropist that 
they should avail themselves to the uttermost of 
the position which they occupy. It is at the 
bidding of their collective will what the remu- 
neration of labour shall be ; for they have entire 
and absolute command over the supply of labour. 
If they will, by their rash and blindfold mar- 
riages, over-people the land, all the devices of 
human benevolence and wisdom cannot ward off 
from them the miseries of an oppressed and 
straitened condition. There is no possible help 
for them if they will not help themselves.' He 
passes in review almost all the economic, poli- 
tical, and social nostrums for remedying the 
distress and improving the condition of the 
labouring class. He rejects some of them as 



220 THOMAS CHALMERS, 

futile and mischievous, all as abortive, unless 
conjoined with a prudential conduct on their own 
part, which will keep within requisite limits the 
numbers of the population, born only to compete 
for labour with their own fathers and brothers 
and neighbours. 'The scheme of home colo- 
nization, and the various proposals of employ- 
ment for the people, and the capabilities of 
increasing capital for their maintenance, and 
the openings of foreign trade, and the relief 
that might be conceived to ensue from the abo- 
lition of taxes, and an indefinite harbourage for 
our increasing numbers in an extended system 
of emigration, and, finally, a compulsory pro- 
vision for the indigent, — all these pass in suc- 
cessive review before us. . » . Though all should 
be tried, yet all will be found wanting. . . . The 
sufficiency of the people's means will at length 
be reached through the medium of the people's 
intelligence and the people's worth. ... A 
thorough education of principle throughout the 
land, though the only, yet is the sure high road 
to the economic wellbeing of the community at 
large.' 

To the demonstration of these various pro- 



r~ 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 221 



positions he devotes the whole of his work on 
Political Economy. He takes up the proposed 
remedies one by one, and, in his usual minute 
and reiterating method, exposes either their 
total falsity, or their inefficiency in the face of 
an ever unrestrained population. His peculiar 
views on some of these subjects — such as capital, 
foreign trade, taxation, and primogeniture — may 
be open to question ; but the ruling conclusion 
to which he perpetually recurs will scarcely be 
disputed, — that any relieving or beneficial effect 
from these remedies will always be defeated, if 
the relief be immediately filled up again, and 
the benefits be immediately consumed, by the 
locust swarms of population incessantly start- 
ing up as any new resources are opened to the 
world. The imminence of these conclusions is 
sometimes denied ; they are staved off as the 
concern of far future generations ; or, where 
the danger is admitted, some vague unreasoned 
hypothesis is often suggested, that, long before 
the evil day comes round, nature, or the course 
of events, will furnish an antidote, which at pre- 
sent can neither be foreseen nor conceived. But 
no one of any authority now denies their truth 



222 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and seriousness as matter of logical argument 
and as matter of natural fact, unless some un- 
precedented change intervene in the resources 
of the earth or in the constitution of man. The 
most advanced and rigidly logical of our econo- 
mists, Stuart Mill, with all his wide hopefulness 
for the working class, is as express and unquali- 
fied and exigent as Chalmers. 

' The doctrine, that to however distant a time 
incessant struggling may put off our doom, the 
progress of society must "end in shallows and 
in miseries," far from being, as many people 
still believe, a wicked invention of Mr. Malthus, 
was either expressly or tacitly affirmed by his 
most distinguished predecessors, and can only 
be successfully combated on his principles. . . . 
It is but rarely that improvements in the con- 
dition of the labouring classes do anything more 
than give a temporary margin, speedily filled 
up by an increase of their numbers. . . . Unless, 
either by their general improvement in intel- 
lectual and moral culture, or at least by raising 
their habitual standard of comfortable living, 
they can be taught to make a better use of • 
favourable circumstances, nothing permanent 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. • 223 

can be done for them : the most -promising 
schemes end only in having a more numerous, 
but not a happier people. ... It appears to 
me impossible but that the increase of intelli- 
gence, of education, and of the love of inde- 
pendence among the working classes, must be 
attended with a corresponding growth of the 
good sense which manifests itself in provident 
habits of conduct; and that population, there- 
fore, will have a gradually diminishing ratio to 
capital and employment' 

We have presented a faint outline of his 
Political Economy ; to be fully appreciated, his 
doctrines must be studied with care in the work 
itself. We cannot venture, within our present 
space, nor do we pretend to have the ability, 
to pronounce on such grave and complicated 
questions, where it is better to be silent, than 
to multiply misunderstandings and dissensions 
by vague, flippant, ill-considered sentences, 
merely to round off a chapter. ' How to deal 
with our labouring classes, — or rather, as it 
looks to me, how they will deal with them- 
selves and all other classes/ — is the awful 
enigma of the age — hanging dark, and close, 



224 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



and thunder-charged over Britain, indeed over 
the whole world, wherever production is, and a 
struggle for its division. The solution is not 
yet The secret is with God : some great mind 
may be preparing to reveal it Check of popula- 
tion may be one stepping-stone; it has long 
been a relief for the upper, the educated, the 
careful middle classes ; why also should not the 
labourers bethink themselves, and bow to the 
necessary law, nor selfishly multiply existences 
merely for sickness and suffering and want, a 
cruel premature death, or a crueller lingering 
life ? Their brethren have done it in old Scot- 
land — do it still in Norway, and sundry other 
countries. But we shudder at the same time 
to think of certain alternatives connected with 
this forcible abstaining from marriage, which 
Chalmers has shrunk from discussing, and we 
must all for the present shrink from. There 
must surely be some purer, loftier solution yet 
awaiting us than this — the ossification of the 
youthful heart — the murder of lawful love. I 
turn from the mystery, having no present call 
to pursue it I cannot solve it ; then why hang * 
over it in despair? I drop the curtain with 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION. 225 

the sentiment which 'Chalmers himself has 
uttered at the close of the preface to his work : 
— ' May God of His infinite mercy grant, that 
whatever the coming changes in the state and 
history of this nation may be, they shall not be 
the result of a sweeping and headlong anarchy ; 
but rather, in the pacific march of improvement, 
may they anticipate this tremendous evil, and 
avert it from our borders I' 




XVII. 



HOME HEATHENISM. 




HALMERS, in 1833-4, was residing 
in Forres Street, Edinburgh, not far 
from the line of the Great North 
Road by Queensferry. In his walks out to 
the country in that direction, he would often 
cross the lofty and spacious Dean Bridge, then 
newly erected, — the latest wonder in Edinburgh, 
— spanning the ravine through which, far below, 
foams the Water of Leith, turbid and brawling, 
and laden with pollution. From this elevation 
he would look down upon the village of the 
Water of Leith, — almost sunk out of sight 
and sound of the world, though within a few 
hundred paces of the metropolis, — antiquated 
and decayed ; cooped within steep narrow pre- 
cipices; with tall gaunt chimneys, untenanted 

226 



f 



HOME HEATHENISM. ivj 

« 

and crumbling granaries, rough dirty streets, 
miserable hovels into which 'every element of 
heaven may enter ;' with scarce any sign of life 
or action, except two or three lounging figures, 
the noise and froth of mill-wheels, the grunting 
of pigs, and the squalling of children without 
childhood. This abject and neglected place had 
made itself very notorious, in the late visita- 
tion of cholera, by its extreme ignorance and 
violence. Yet in many ways it had a quaint, 
old-fashioned, half-savage charm. To the anti- 
quarian, this village was a curious relic of the 
past, lying close to, yet with a kind of repulsion 
hiding itself from, the encroaching pomp of 
the New Town of Edinburgh. To the painter 
or poet it had strange bits of ancient mason- 
work; and it had frothing pools, and steep 
banks clustered all over with wild vegetation, 
and aspects of a rude primitive life. Chalmers 
was not insensible to the associations of the 
past; for, was he not born and brought up 
amongst the old decayed towns of the East of 
Fife? He had also the artist's eye for quaint 
and out-of-the-way nooks, either of nature or 
of human habitation. But these lighter moods, 



228 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

• 
though neither scorned nor abjured, were in 

his mind always subordinated to the sen- 
timent of Christian benevolence. Looking, 
then, from the height of the Dean Bridge, 
he might feel, ' How antique ! how it carries 
one back to the time when Mary Stuart 
rode her palfrey across that now toppling 
old bridge in her excursions to the High- 
lands!' Or, 'How quaint and picturesque 
these straggling houses, in the deep ravine, 
with the babbling brook running through the 
midst!' But his uppermost feeling would be, 
'What a spot, as if scooped out by nature, 
and thrown aside by man, to plant a Terri- 
torial Church, with all its reclaiming and puri- 
fying influences!' 

And in the Water of Leith he resolved to 
show to the world a new model of that Terri- 
torial system, which he had begun in St John's 
of Glasgow. 

On a survey, it was found that the inhabi- 
tants were 1356 in number, but of these only 
143 had sittings in any place of worship. There 
was a meeting-house of some denomination in 
or near the village, but only five of the in- 



I 



HOME HEATHENISM. 229 

habitants had sittings ; it was attended almost 
entirely by persons coming from a distance, 
outside the territory of the Water of Leith. 
Chalmers, assisted by the liberal friends who 
never failed him, determined to raise here a 
territorial church, specially devoted to the in- 
habitants of the Water of Leith. A missionary 
began his labours amongst them in 1833. He 
visited from house to house, made the acquaint- 
ance of the people, was courteously received 
by them, conversed with them, visited the sick, 
was with them in the hour of affliction and 
death, was their daily counsellor and friend. 
He invited them to come to meetings, where 
he addressed them — in fact, preached to them. 
His audience became more and more numerous ; 
he had to seek out places of meeting larger 
and larger ; at last he resorted to an old malt- 
granary, where, with great packing, some 400 
people could attend. A church was then 
erected by subscription, which was opened in 
May 1836. The sittings were about 1000, and 
at a moderate charge, and offered in preference 
to the inhabitants. Soon after the opening, 
about 700 of the sittings were taken, and 



230 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

almost entirely by inhabitants. It was a true 
territorial church. 

Chalmers officiated at the opening, and 
dwelt paternally upon the effect of its territorial 
character. 

' Instead of leaving this church to fill as it 
may from all parts of the town, we first hold 
out the seats that we have to dispose of, at 
such prices as we can afford, to its own parish 
families. . . . Our fond wish for Edinburgh 
and its environs is that, district after dis- 
trict, new churches may arise, and old ones be 
thrown open to their own parish families, till 
not one house remains which has not within 
its walls some stated worshipper in one or 
other of our Christian assemblies ; and not 
one individual can be pointed to, however 
humble and unknown, who has not some 
man of God for his personal acquaintance, 
some Christian minister for his counsellor and 
friend.' 

This new and eminently successful model of 
Territorialism, coupled with his long teachings, 
the private exertions at the very same time of 
his old Glasgow friends, and also the religious 



f 



HOME HEATHENISM. 231 

darkness and fearful profligacy especially of the 
large towns, were at length stirring the Church 
of Scotland from its culpable neglect The 
General Assembly in 1834 appointed a Church 
Extension Committee, and placed Chalmers at 
its head as convener. He was now clothed with 
an official status; and with undiminished, nay, 
with reanimated vigour, he prepared to carry 
this, probably his latest effort, to the height of 
a national concern ; to pour the light of religion 
and knowledge, of industry and independent 
feeling, into the remotest and most degraded 
corners of Scotland. 

But to appreciate thoroughly his views and 
motives in this work of Extension, let us now 
recapitulate distinctly what were his fixed tenets 
on the purposes and uses of an Establishment ; 
its constitution ; the terms on which the State 
has sought its alliance; and its perfect self- 
governing power within the whole province of 
its doctrine, discipline, and ministrations. In 
these tenets the Evangelical majority, which now 
filled the Established Church, most earnestly 
agreed with him. 

He believed then, in theory, that there was 



232 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

nothing unscriptural, nothing wrong in any 
way, but, on the contrary, that it was most 
salutary, and in accordance with Scripture, that 
the State, for the religious instruction and moral 
improvement of its people, should engage the 
services of the Church — that is, of a given 
organized body of men maintaining a system 
of Christian doctrine, with some form of govern- 
ment over their own ministers and members. 
Civilly and politically they are the subjects of 
the State ; but ecclesiastically, in their Church 
organization, they rule and govern themselves 
apart from the State. The State might in this 
sense form a connection with the Church, estab- 
lish it by law, and make over to it certain 
endowments for the support of its clergy, and 
the efficient performance of its functions as the 
National Church. But the union must be 
honestly for the religious instruction and moral 
improvement of the people, not for any sinister 
purpose, such as the mere pensioning of State 
minions and hangers-on of the aristocracy, or 
the corrupting of the minds of the people 
through the distilments of a paid clergy. 
Therefore, in its establishment, the Church 



r 



HOME HE A THENISM. 233 

must not be made a tool to be used by the 
governing party in the State, or be turned 
by a hair's-breadth from its true spiritual ten- 
dencies. His theory was the reverse of that of 
the Erastian jurists, to whom the Church is the 
mere creature of Downing Street. The Down- 
ing Street theory was never more nakedly pro- 
pounded than in a speech lately delivered by 
the present Attorney-General (Collier), 'before 
the clergy and some of the laity of the city of 
London/ says the report in the Times of the 5 th 
February 1870. ' He said/ continues the report, 
'he fearlessly confessed that he knew nothing 
of theology ; but he repeatedly insisted that the 
Established Church was a political institution, 
established, created, and protected by law. . . . 
The Church of England was a temporal institu- 
tion, absolutely dependent upon Parliament It 
was a provision made by Parliament for carrying 
throughout the country religious teachjpg ; but 
what kind of religious teaching, was settled for 
us by Parliament.' That is to say, the Estab- 
lished Church is a mere bureau of the State — 
the State in a surplice preaching to the State in 
a plain coat A very edifying spectacle truly ! 



234 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

This is what the Voluntaries have always al- 
leged ; and they will be very grateful for such 
an unqualified opinion from such a great man as 
an attorney-general, without payment of a fee. 
I believe it is the hard, unmystified fact; but this 
opinion coming from such a quarter must be a 
terrible disenchantment to those who, as was 
the case with Chalmers, would fain elevate an 
Establishment in their imaginations — as the 
organ of a purely religious initiative — as an 
independent exposition of religious thought and 
duty both to Parliament and people. If — they 
contend — if a Christian Church is to be really 
of use to the people of a State, it must be the 
Church untampered with by the State itself, 
or any other foreign influence. If, for some 
politic reason, the Church cannot be established 
free, it had better not be established at all, 
but be simply left to work its way amongst 
the people spontaneously. If the intention be 
honest, — to evangelize and civilise the whole 
population, — the Christian Church, chosen for 
such a high end, should be left free in its 
doctrine, free in its government, free and un- 
trammelled to work out its mission of Chris- 



HOME HEATHENISM. 23$ 

tianization and civilisation ; not subject in its 
ecclesiastical arrangements to any of the civil 
courts of the State. If any collision should occur 
between them at any doubtful point, where it 
may be difficult to discriminate between the 
civil and the ecclesiastical, then the State should 
not stand back, and leave an unseemly battle to 
be fought out between the Church and the civil 
courts; the State should step in, through its 
government or legislature, treating the Church, 
not as a mere bureau, but honourably as a re- 
ligious ally, and should seek to remove the 
difficulty by some amendment in the terms of 
the alliance. If conciliation were impossible — 
if the collision were irremediable — then the 
State might break the alliance, as being a poli- 
tical drawback instead of an advantage. It 
might disestablish, it should never dishonour or 
degrade the National Church. 

If this was the theory which Chalmers main- 
tained in relation to the terms of union between 
Church and State, then he also believed, his- 
torically, that the Church of Scotland had been 
received into union with the State expressly as a 
free, self-governing Church. She had always pro- 



236 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

claimed aloud, in her confessions and standards, 
that she owned no head but Christ, speaking 
to her in His word and through the influences 
of His Spirit, and by the earthly medium of 
office-bearers lawfully chosen. She regulated 
all her affairs in doctrine, government, and dis- 
cipline ; and, amongst other matters of govern- 
ment and discipline, her councils had the sole 
control over the ordination of her ministers, 
and over the conditions on which alone such 
ordination would be granted. In exercise of 
this control, she had, in all ages — in the face of 
hostility, fraud, and persecution — insisted that no 
minister should, by force of patronage, or in any 
other way, be intruded upon any congregation 
against their clearly expressed will. As a test 
of acceptance by the congregation, she had 
lately (in the General Assembly of 1834) passed 
the Veto ordinance, that, if the majority of the 
male communicants should veto any presentee 
as unsuitable to them, he should be rejected by 
the Church courts — that is, they should refuse 
to ordain him on account of this veto by the 
people. If any formidable difficulty were to 
arise in the course of her self-government, the 



HOME HEATHENISM. 237 

Established Church was entitled to look to the 
State for rectification, and not be left to an 
endless, tormenting jangle with the civil courts. 
If a patron had rights of presentation, but the 
Church had ecclesiastical grounds to reject the 
presentee, the civil courts might dispose of 
the temporalities, — the stipend and properties, 
— but could use no compulsitor on the Church, 
to force her to ordain the presentee as one of 
her ministers in things spiritual. Further, he 
believed that the Church had the most ample 
inherent powers to extend her religious super- 
intendence, especially amongst the very poor 
and destitute and degraded ; to raise congrega- 
tions amongst them; and to set apart and 
attach to these congregations particular terri- 
tories, not for any civil effect (quoad civilia), but 
only for the spiritual recovery of an outcast 
population {quoad sacra). 

It was with these undoubting beliefs that Chal- 
mers now embarked upon the extension of the 
Church of Scotland — the raising of the City of 
God in every desolate corner of the realm. He 
believed that the Church could create and attach 
territories to the new chapels ; that she could 



238 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

bar the intrusion of unacceptable ministers upon 
her congregations ; that she could promote the 
edification of the people against all external in- 
terference ; that within her own domain she had 
constitutional privileges, which no civil court 
could invade, or, if invaded, the Government 
was bound, and would never refuse, to come to 
the rescue. 

Localism should now girdle the nation. 
From three to four hundred chapels, with at- 
tendant schools and other improving agencies, 
would break up every patch of home heathen- 
ism. He renewed his youth ; he kindled even 
with intenser glow ; it was not Glasgow now — 
it was not Edinburgh now — it was all Scotland 
that he was going to localize. Every 2000 of 
the population should have their own imme- 
diate centre, from which would emanate upon 
them all the blessings of the life religious and 
moral, social, family, and individual. He tra- 
versed the country from Solway to Dornoch ; he 
exerted all his eloquence, all his influence, and 
with the old result — palace and cottage alike 
responded to Thomas Chalmers. By 1841 he 
had 222 of his new churches erected or erecting; 



HOME HEATHENISM. 239 

and had raised £306,000 to make little Kil- 
manies of every dark place in Scotland. In two 
or three years more he would have reached his 
number — from three to four hundred churches 
with their accompaniments ; and he could then 
have rested in the blessed hope, that to what 
he had planted, and his fellow -labourers had 
watered, God in due time would give the in- 
crease. 

What then stops him in the accomplishment 
of his beneficent plans ? Does his courage or 
his vigour fail ? Does the liberality of the 
people desert him as a summer brook? No! 
whilst his arm is yet lifted up, — whilst the 
sacred treasury is still overflowing, — he is sud- 
denly arrested in his movements by a concourse 
of parties, who think to preserve the Church of 
Scotland as a State machine, by pulling out her 
springs and taking off her wheels. 



^vfDk 




c&i&ittimt) 



XVIII. 



DISESTABLISHMENT BEGUN. 




HE Evangelicals within the Establish- 
ment had been swelling in numbers 
and importance, until, much to the 
chagrin of the Moderate party, they had now 
gained the preponderance. They were leaven- 
ing the whole Church with their doctrines and 
sentiments; they were enlisting all the young 
and the active, all the benevolent and pious. It 
was they, not the Moderates, who sustained the 
brunt of the battle against Voluntaryism — who 
made a wall of their breasts in defence of the 
National Zion — who not only broke the first 
impetuosity of the Voluntary movement, but 
were fast bringing back again the tens of 
thousands of the expatriated, who, in the long 
previous years, had seceded from the Establish- 

240 



DISESTABLISHMENT BEGUN. 241 

ment, not from want of love for her, but from 
the very excess of it; and because her own love 
in her Master's service had waxed cold. I 
testify this the more freely, because my youth 
was nurtured amid the traditions and opinions 
of the Voluntary Seceders, and in a certain 
feeling of umbrage against Chalmers and his 
Evangelicals; and all my prepossessions were, 
and are, opposed to the secular establishment 
of any religious denomination. But I must 
confess, from my own recollections of the time, 
the Church of Scotland was never so strong, 
never so firmly riveted in the hearts of the 
people of all classes, never so like going forth 
to conquer even within the borders of Seces- 
sion, as she was in the years from 1833 to 1840. 
As Chalmers proclaimed to the fascinated 
princes, and bishops, and nobles, and statesmen 
of England, in his celebrated lectures of 1838: 
'We appear for the families of our peasants 
and our artisans, and our men of handicraft and 
hard labour. We are the tribunes of the people, 
the representatives of that class to whom the 
law has given no other representatives of their 
own — of the unenfranchised multitude, who are 

Q 



242 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

without a vote and without a voice in the House 
of Commons. Our sacred object is the moral 
wellbeing of that mighty host who swarm and 
overspread the ground-floor of the fabric of our 
commonwealth ; and after the mists of prejudice 
and misconception have cleared away, our ulti- 
mate hope of success, under Heaven, is in the 
inherent and essential popularity of our cause ! ' 
But as the Evangelicals were now extending 
the Church into every corner of the land, and 
making her again the Church of the people, 
they must also bring her more into accordance 
with the wishes and spirit of the people; 
that is, in short, they must give to the people 
some kind of efficient control in the appoint- 
ment of their ministers. They were not pre- 
pared, were not inclined, even if they had the 
legal right, to abolish patronage altogether; 
they were not prepared, were not inclined, to 
give the direct vote to the congregations. But 
their chief advisers hit upon this expedient : to 
make it a rule or ordinance of the Church, that, 
on a presentation being made by the patron, 
if the majority of the male heads of families, 
being communicants, should disapprove of the 



DISESTABLISHMENT BEGUN. 243 

presentee, then this disapproval or veto should 
be an effectual bar to his ordination, and 
accordingly the presbytery of the district should 
refuse to admit or ordain him. This was the 
Veto ordinance passed by the General Assembly 
in 1834. Technically it is called the Veto Act, 
but I prefer calling it an ordiftance 9 to distin- 
guish it from an Act of Parliament Chalmers 
himself, be it observed, with something of the 
timidity as well as foresight of the careful, 
practical administrator, was against going the 
length of the Veto ordinance ; and when that 
was decided, he urged that they should obtain 
a concurrent Parliamentary sanction, that is, a 
confirmatory Act of Parliament, to prevent colli- 
sion between the claims of the patron and this 
ordinance of the Church. He was overruled by 
such great constitutional lawyers as Lord Mon- 
creiff, and he submitted ; and afterwards he 
loyally fought the battle of Non-Intrusion on 
ground which he had not chosen, and to which 
he had strongly objected. 

The Evangelicals, merely because they were 
Evangelicals, were already the objects of 
jealousy and dislike to the Moderates, and 



244 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

to the ordinary men of the world ; but this Veto 
ordinance — making the Church's act of ordina- 
tion override the patron's act of presentation, in 
fact, asserting that the Church might refuse, and 
could not be compelled to ordain— drew down 
upon them the more potent wrath of the land- 
ocracy, who held the patronages, and of the 
English governing politicians, trained from their 
cradle in the fixed idea, that the Church, not 
merely in its civil relations, but also in its 
religious and disciplinary functions, should be 
directly and completely under the thumb of the 
State, that is, of any existing ministry and fac- 
tion. Gradually then an understanding, a play- 
ing from hand to hand, commenced between 
Moderatism, landocracy, and Erastianism, either 
in some way or other to subdue these rampant 
Evangelicals, or to get their ringleaders ejected 
from the Church which they were disturbing. 

Thus it was, briefly and generally, that Chal- 
mers was stopped in building his City of God ; 
that the Church of Scotland was disrupted 
in the very zenith of her strength and glory, 
and by those who vaunted themselves in then- 
day as the pillars of Conservatism. Thus also 



DISESTABLISHMENT BEGUN. 245 

the other Establishments of Britain and Ire- 
land, to whom that of Scotland was such a firm 
outlying buttress, were shaken to their fall — 
which some of them have since experienced, 
and others seem to be passively awaiting. 




XIX. 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 




T is not our intention to enter minutely 
into the questions of the Disruption. 
The incidents are so comparatively 
recent, and were so momentous and memor- 
able, that there are few persons who have not 
a sufficient general acquaintance with them. 
But the real and cogent reason is that to 
which I have already had occasion to allude. 
My design has been to exhibit a continuous 
outline of the religious and social movements 
originated by Chalmers — to trace the aims 
and purposes of his life. But the Disruption 
was no aim and purpose of his life. It came 
upon him as the reversal, for the time, of all 
his aims and purposes. It does not there- 
fore fall so directly within the scope of my 

246 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 247 

design. The Establishment was always the 
instrument he counted upon in the work of 
extension; it was the only effective platform 
for carrying out his parochial system ; and 
the disruption of the Establishment, in his 
estimation, was the saddest of disasters, — a 
necessity, as he viewed it, but a heart-wringing 
necessity. He bore it valiantly and manfully. 
He would father lose the Establishment than 
keep it, when bereft, as he believed, of all in- 
dependence, all self-government, all power over 
its own ministrations, all guarantee for the 
spiritual teaching of the people. Never was 
his eloquence more Demosthenic than in the 
series of orations for the liberty of the Church. 
Never were his abilities as a governor of man- 
kind more transcendent, than in the policy by 
which he bore his Free Church aloft through 
its first tremendous difficulties; landed it in 
a safe and well-provided haven ; struck out 
a new ecclesiastical finance almost as steady 
and universal as an Establishment ; and went 
forth in his old old age, at the head of his 
people, to found a new City of God. Never 
was he liker one of the ancient Fathers of the 



248 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Church. Never was he liker the mighty old 
Popes — the Leos and the Gregories — when the 
early Church of Rome was still a spiritual 
mother to the nations. Any man of histori- 
cal reading must often have felt this resem- 
blance : that he had all the better part of the 
hierarch in his soul, whose aim was to train 
the people to holy living through holy institu- 
tions. But his victories at the crisis of the 
Disruption were like the victories in a civil 
war, where the flag is flying over the battered 
citadels of one's own country ; where the laurel 
is . wreathed with the cypress. In words of 
deepest agony Chalmers bewailed 'the sore, 
bitter, crushing disappointment — the blasting 
of all my fondest hopes for the good and 
peace of our Church.' 

But — to keep up the consistency of his life 
to his principles — we must explain, however 
shortly, how the Disruption came in his way, 
and arrested his grand triumphal march in 
the path of Territorial Extension. 

We have seen that Chalmers valued an 
Established Church principally because it was 
the best instrument for the extension of the 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 249 

parochial system into the unprovided parts of 
the country ; whilst he maintained, on the 
other hand, that the Scottish Establishment 
at least, whatever might be the case with other 
Establishments, was under no slavery from its 
connection with the State, was as free in its 
action as any Voluntary denomination : for in- 
stance, had absolute power as to the ordination 
of its ministers, and could reject a patron's 
presentee if he were unacceptable to a congre- 
gation, even, as he had always maintained, 
without any assigned reason ; and above all, 
had absolute power to extend its • churches, 
and attach to them a defined territory out of 
any existing parish, for the purely spiritual 
superintendence of such territory by the mini- 
sters with their sessions. 

But the tract of judicial decisions which 
precipitated the Disruption had entirely swept 
away the strengths in which he was confiding. 
The Civil Courts had now pronounced : — 

That the Church cannot lawfully detach a 
new territory from an existing parish, and 
assign it to the spiritual charge of the minister 
and office-bearers of any extension chapel, or 



250 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

give them right to their own church-door col- 
lections, for the management of their own 
pauperism, or for any other purpose, because 
such collections belong exclusively to the heri- 
tors of the parish in which such extension 
chapel is situated : That it was illegal to refuse 
ordination to a patron's presentee if he was 
qualified in literature and manners ; that the 
Church could not lawfully refuse, on the ground 
that he was unsuitable and unacceptable to 
the people, and that they had recorded their 
veto against him ; if she so refused, she was 
liable in damages, and could even be ordered 
by the civil courts to proceed to ordination: 
That the civil courts have the right to inter- 
dict ministers, duly authorized and instructed 
by the General Assembly, from preaching and 
administering the sacraments in certain boun- 
daries ; and if the interdict be broken, the 
ministers may be punished by fine or imprison- 
ment 

We do not inquire whether these decisions 
were right or wrong, as interpretations of the 
law. Agrippa had spoken, and Caesar declined 
to take up the appeal The tribunals decided 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 251 



against the Church, and the Government drew 
itself up in cold neutrality, and refused to inter- 
fere. But if such was the law of Scotland ; if 
new territorial churches, with full power of man- 
agement, could not be constituted ; and if the 
Church courts were no better than hands to 
ordain, as a matter of course, the patron's pre- 
sentee, if only qualified in literature and manners, 
however unsuitable ; if they were utterly help- 
less to defend their congregations from intrusion; 
and if, at such an emergency, the Government 
would not step in to the rescue, — then the 
Establishment had lost its operative value to 
Chalmers. He could not carry out his terri- 
torial extensions ; he could not grapple with 
pauperism ; he had no guarantee for a popular 
and useful ministry, no assurance for the Chris- 
tian instruction and social regeneration of the 
people. 

' If the vindication of her outraged authority,' 
as he exclaimed in the last crisis of her fate, 
'is indeed to be the precursor of her dissolu- 
tion as a National Church; if — in the recent 
language of an offended nobleman within these 
walls — if this is to be the last knell of the 



252 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Presbyterian Establishment in Scotland, — only 
let the Legislature say so ; and then let it be 
seen whether or not the Church of our fathers 
be prepared to abjure her connection with the 
State, rather than, bereft of all her respect, 
and so of all her usefulness, she will submit to 
be vilified into a thing of nought* 

By the summer of 1841 it was plain that 
Government would do nothing to extricate the 
confusion ; they seemed rather to like the con- 
fusion, because this might be the means to get 
rid of the little knot of disturbers, as they con- 
sidered them, who were too far committed to 
recede. The Moderates were throwing matters 
into chaos, by insubordination to the votes of 
the Evangelical majority ; thinking that, by 
producing a dead-lock, they would force on a 
crisis, from which they as a party had nothing 
to apprehend, as their friends were all-pre- 
vailing at court Then reports were flying 
amongst the common herd, who neither know 
nor believe in the possibility of self-sacrifice, 
that the agitators were losing heart, and would 
never take the leap. 

Chalmers laid clear the situation in one of 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 253 

his refulgent sentences. Thus spoke he before 
the Commission on the 25th of August : — 

'As to the war of argument, that is now 
over; seeing the time has come when the 
strife of words must give place to the strife 
of opposing deeds and opposing purposes. . . . 
Be it known unto all men, then, that we have 
no wish for a disruption, but neither stand we 
in the overwhelming dread of it We have no 
ambition, as has pleasantly been said of us, 
for martyrdom of any sort, but neither will we 
shrink from the hour or the day of trial. In 
short, let it be distinctly known, both over the 
country at large, and more especially in the 
camp of our adversaries, that whatever the 
misgivings might be in other quarters, amongst 
us there are no falterings, no fears. Should 
what has been termed the crisis arrive, we 
know of a clear and an honourable, and withal 
a Christian outgoing, confident in the smile 
of an approving Heaven from above ; and that 
confidence not abated when we look around 
on the goodly spectacle of our friends and 
fellow-Christians — the best and worthiest of 
Scotland's sons — in readiness to hail and to 



254 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



harbour the men who are willing to give up 
all for the sake of conscience and of Christian 
liberty. The God whom they serve will not 
leave them without help, or without a home.' 

Faithful to his own words, he was now 
devoting himself to insure that 'help and 
home/ which, it was evident, would soon be 
required. His unshrinking fellow-soldiers were 
occupying themselves very little with the 
thought of the new quarters into which they 
might be driven. Their future provision en- 
tered little into their calculations. That is the 
testimony concerning them of all fair and dis- 
passionate observers. Many of them Arere men 
of simple, unflickering faith, who thought not 
of the morrow, but, child-like, trusted in the 
God of yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Many 
of them, again, were men of magnanimity and 
enthusiasm, who in a good cause would face 
any morrow, however dark and dismal. But 
if his thick-encircling band of heroes were in- 
different to the future, or were piously assured 
of it, Chalmers, from instinct and loyalty, felt 
it all the more his duty to conceive and execute, 
for their security, another of his bold financial 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 255 

combinations. He was a man of faith, as much 
as the devoutest of them ; he was a man of 
enthusiasm, as much as the fieriest of them ; 
but he was also, by genius, a man fertile of 
invention and exhaustless in finance. All his 
life long he has been raising princely sums for 
his Church. Shall he fail her now, when she is 
to be turned out, naked and despoiled, from the 
altars which she has been defending from vio- 
lation ? 

Foreseeing, then, in this summer of 1841, that 
Disruption was inevitable, he applied his mind 
to the first tracing out of a scheme by which 
the Chuifch of Scotland, disestablished by the 
force of circumstances, could . be carried over to 
the platform of a Free Church, without any 
essential loss or detriment, with its character, 
capabilities, and services unimpaired. A colos- 
sal attempt ! never made before in the history 
of Secession, — to raise up the seceding body at 
once, to the height and magnitude of the true 
National Establishment. A scheme then must 
be devised, that should secure for the ministers, 
not uncertain, fluctuating stipends, but some- 
thing like the fixity of endowments ; that should 



256 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

speedily cover the country with new churches ; 
that should found and support an equal com- 
plement of schools ; and that should hold out 
the ulterior prospect of extending churches 
and schools, and all religious, educational, and 
charitable instrumentalities, into all unprovided 
localities, whether in the large cities, or in the 
most lone and sequestered districts of the 
country. 

He framed a brief Memorandum of provi- 
sion, tracing out the main lines of such a 
scheme, so simple, that one is almost puzzled 
at the fame which it has acquired (like the egg 
of Columbus) ; yet so definite, exact, and com- 
plete, that when the crisis did finally arrive, it 
was at once adopted, and has ever since been 
adhered to. It has accomplished results at 
which even statesmen and the leaders of public 
opinion are astonished ; and into which, with a 
view to eventful problems yet to be wrought j 

out, they are minutely inquiring. 

Certainly the groundwork of the scheme is 
simple ; and the working of it has been as 
simple as it has been prolific. 

First, — In every given district of the country, 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 257 

let there be instituted a local or congrega- 
tional association. 

Second, — Let these associations collect dona- 
tions and subscriptions. 

Third, — Let these donations and subscriptions 
be periodically remitted to a Central Board 
in Edinburgh. 

Fourth, — Let the Central Board set apart the 
donations into a Building Fund for churches. 

Fifth, — Let the Board hold the subscriptions 
as a Sustentation Fund for the support of 
the ministry. 

Sixth, — From the Sustentation Fund, let there 
be allocated to the several ministers an 
equal dividend or stipend, not to exceed an 
amount to be fixed by way of maximum. 

Seventh, — Any surplus remaining after such 
distribution, shall be devoted to the objects 
of church and school extension through- 
out the country. 

Eighth, — Congregations may increase the 
dividend stipends of their ministers, by 
supplementary contributions. 

Ninth, — The ancient order of deacons shall 
be revived in each congregation, to take 



258 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

charge of all funds committed to them, 
whether for the support of the ministry, 
the relief of the poor, or other congrega- 
tional purposes. 
This Memorandum was at first distributed 
tentatively as a private circular amongst a few 
tried and experienced friends. But the scheme 
was never in any way touched ; it was accepted 
by the friends to whom it was shown as com- 
pletely meeting the emergency, if it should arise ; 
and, as we have said, it was ultimately adopted 
by the body, and was put into working gear 
by Chalmers himself when the Disruption came 
round, and created the necessity of taking mea- 
sures of provision. 

This financial scheme of support, communi- 
cated at first only to a few friends, was for a 
long time unknown to the general body of 
Evangelical ministers. They were going for- 
ward, maintaining their principles, and waging 
their warfare, so long as there was an inch of 
territory left to fight upon, without casting a 
thought upon their future fate. If a thought 
crossed their minds at all, it probably took this 
shape, that they would be supported as the 



NEW ERA OF FREE CHURCHES. 259 

ministers of the previous Scottish Secessions had 
been, by voluntary stipends from their respec- 
tive congregations. But, as we have already 
mentioned, there is the concurrent testimony of 
many observant and honourable persons, who 
knew them and mixed largely amongst them, 
that thought or care for the future was quite 
remarkably absent from their minds; and that 
such considerations had not the weight of a 
feather in swaying their judgments. 




XX. 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 




N view of the clearly impending crisis, 
a special convocation of the Evan- 
gelical ministers assembled in Edin- 
burgh — 450 strong— in the month of November 
1842. It was opened by Chalmers with a serene 
and luminous discourse, from these words of the 
Psalmist, ' Unto the upright there ariseth light 
in the darkness.' 'I speak in the hearing of 
men/ he said, 'firmly resolved as ever to lose 
all, and to suffer all, rather than surrender the 
birthright of those prerogatives which we inherit 
from our fathers, or compromise the sacred 
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free; 
of men whose paramount question is, What 
is duty ? that best stepping-stone to the solu- 
tion of the other question, What is wisdom ? 

260 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 261 

For it is when in this spirit of uprightness, 
this blessed frame of simplicity and godly sin- 
cerity, that light is made to arise, and Wisdom 
is justified of her children.' But here again 
the Convocation assembled, not to lay plans 
for their future provision, but to deliberate 
solemnly upon the new position of the Church, 
in consequence of recent decisions of the Court 
of Session, and of the failure of all attempts 
hitherto made at legislation. They met to con- 
sider, not, 'Where are our stipends to come 
from?' but, 'What are the exact principles 
which must determine whether we can remain 
within, or must withdraw from, the endowed 
Church, — that is, retain our stipends, or throw 
them to the winds, whatever be the conse- 
quences?' They agreed in this resolution:— 
'That as the principle involved in these deci- 
sions ... is that of the supremacy of the Civil 
Courts over those of the Established Church in 
the exercise of their spiritual functions, so the 
members of the Convocation declare, that no 
measure can in conscience be submitted to, 
which does not effectually protect the Church 
against the exercise of such jurisdiction of the 



262 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



Civil Courts in time to come.' Chalmers was 
distressed at their apathy regarding the future 
means of provision. They were giving no 
thought to this subject at all. He sought per- 
mission, therefore, to expound to them his 
scheme of Sustentation, which the body, both 
ministers and laymen, were now to hear for the 
first time. It had hitherto reposed in his own 
breast, and amongst the few to whom the short 
Memorandum had been imparted. He now 
expounded it in the fullest details, through the 
whole modes of working; and even pledged 
himself to numerical results, and to the cer- 
tainty and sufficiency of the revenue, both for 
ministerial support and for territorial extension. 
He dilated upon it with his usual intense realism, 
with an assurance as if he were explaining the 
history of some existing and well-wrought in- 
stitution, not holding out only a vision of the 
future. The four hundred and fifty listened 
with admiration, as they would do to anything 
that fell from the eloquent lips of Chalmers. 
They respected his motives ; they appreciated 
his heart-warm anxiety for the welfare of them- 
selves and their households, and for the up- 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 263 

holding of the sanctuary ; but even those most 
attached to him, and who were quite satisfied 
of his financial ability, listened as to an imagi- 
native project — fair and ingenious to look at, 
but too ideal, too complicated and delicate, to 
be reduced into practice. His Biographer, who 
was in the midst of affairs, assures us, ' that not 
ten out of the four hundred ministers to whom 
it originally was broached had much, if any, 
faith in its success ; nor was there one, perhaps, 
whose decision upon the great question of duty 
then before them it served in any appreciable 
degree to sway. It was listened to with general 
incredulity; and the prospects held out by it 
were regarded as the visionary anticipations of 
a too sanguine imagination/ 

Chalmers, in a speech next year, reverted to 
the general smile, at once of disbelief and 
amusement, with which his scheme was at 
first received. * Though I am not a professor 
of physiognomy, when I chanced to lift my 
eyes off the paper to the countenances of 
those who were before me, I observed in 
them a good-natured leer of incredulity, mixed 
up, no doubt, with a benignant complacency, 



264 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



which they cast on the statements and high- 
coloured representations of a very sanguine 
Utopian.' 

The Convocation, with many polite acknow- 
ledgments, passed away from any discussion on 
the scheme — passed to the previous question, 
so to speak, and simply put upon record — 
what was their true feeling — this act of faith 
in the fatherhood of God : — ' It is the determi- 
nation of the brethren now assembled, if no 
measure such as they have declared to be 
indispensable be granted, to tender the resig- 
nation of their civil advantages, which they can 
no longer hold in consistency with the free and 
full exercise of their spiritual functions, and to 
cast themselves on such provision aS God in His 
providence may afford.' 

Such then are their protestations ; but — € Will 
they come out ?' 

The honest, sensible Moderates, who have 
always shown a due respect for things that 
have a solid value, believe the Evangelicals will 
think twice before they give up their comfort- 
able manses and well-paid stipends. ' I should 
like to know/ said douce Dr. Grant, 'how 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 265 

many of our opponents are to leave us/ The 
Trimmers, forty in number, most irreverently 
dubbed the 'Forty Thieves/ who, so long as 
it was talk only, had been fluttering between 
pence and popularity, have now nestled down 
ignominiously to pence, amid general laughter, 
and are doing what they can to break up the 
Evangelical party, and bring them into the 
same discredit and contempt with themselves. 
The men of the Clubs, tired of yawning into 
Princes Street, have got up a mild form of 
sensation by laying bets on the result — the 
odds, as might be expected, being hollow 
against faith and heroism. The representatives 
of wig-wisdom in Edinburgh are assuring the 
Government, — 'Mark my words, not forty of 
them will go out' l Forty P cries Prophet John 
Cumming from his tripod in Crown Court, 
London, always so lucky in his predictions, ' I 
am not satisfied that any will secede!' Sir 
George Sinclair of Ulbster, on the contrary, a 
man himself of faith and enthusiasm, and there- 
fore capable of understanding them in others, 
warned the Government only a month before 
the approaching Assembly, that almost all the 



266 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

450 who had attended the Convocation would 
secede; and he added, 'You have no doubt 
heard of the Highland chief who, when desired 
to occupy an inferior place at the festive board, 
exclaimed, "Wherever Macdonald sits, that is 
the head of the table." With still greater truth 
may it be said on this occasion, "Wherever 
Thomas Chalmers is, .there is the Church of 
Scotland." ' 

Who can tell ? There may be a pitiful failure 
of performance, after all these solemn convo- 
cations, all these vigorous protestations. The 
world thinks so, and the world is too often 
correct in its low estimate of human virtue. 
The higher emotions of the spirit are as blinks 
of the sun in a wintry day; the temptations 
of the flesh are ever present, ever seductive, and 
fall in so smoothly with our natural selfishness 
and love of ease. To break with the habits of 
centuries, to disturb long-settled associations, 
to leave all earthly possessions for an extreme 
proposition — 'tis hard, 'tis hard, and sore against 
the flesh. 

' Weak and irresolute is man: 
The purpose of to-day, 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 267 

Woven with pains into his plan, 
To-morrow rends away/ 

To-morrow we shall see ! 

It was Thursday, the 18th day of May 1843 
—(I gather my information from various con- 
temporary witnesses, and partly from my own 
impressions, for I was in Edinburgh at the 
time, although pinned all day to my desk ; 
but the sounds of the Disruption came in upon 
me, as wave broke after wave). The morning 
rose dull and cloudy ; but as the day advanced, 
it became clearer and more settled. For several 
days previously there had been an unusual in- 
flux of strangers into Edinburgh, — some drawn 
by curiosity, but tens of thousands from pro- 
found sympathy, and the exultation to behold 
a sublime spectacle. By four in the morning, 
numbers had taken their seats in St Andrew's 
Church of the New Town, in which the business 
of the Assembly would be transacted, where 
they sat in expectation for upwards of nine 
hours. A still greater number had taken their 
seats, as early, in the large hall of the Canon- 
mills, an extensive pile on the north side of 
the town, down by the Water of Leith, where 



268 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

preparations had been made for the reception 
of the New Assembly on their withdrawal — for 
the formal inauguration of the Free Church of 
Scotland. Long before the middle of the day 
all ordinary business was suspended. Edin- 
burgh itself, with its stern and sturdy burghers 
— its lawyers and logicians, at least half divided 
in opinion, always more bent upon first prin- 
ciples than upon traditional commonplaces 
— its accomplished and high-spirited women, 
always on the van of thought, never shrinking 
in conventional silliness when it is woman's 
work to act in the cause of liberty or benevo- 
lence, — Edinburgh itself, we say, was one of 
the chief centres of propagandism, if not the 
chief, for the Free movement ; so that hundreds 
of the best citizens had early left their homes, 
and in various directions were busily engaged 
in one department or other of the preliminary 
arrangements, either from official duty, or to 
aid and animate their brethren. The usual 
dense but eddying crowds were to be seen at 
the various points where there was any cause 
of interest or attraction. Even the cynics, who 
kept aloof at first with airs of superior wisdom 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 269 

—who cared not a jot, not they, what a pack 
of fanatics would do — who stuck all forenoon 
to their rooms or their desks with quite unpre- 
cedented industry, — even they, as the hour 
approached, were sensible of the magnetic cur- 
rent ; they rose and looked out, and hearkened, 
and hankered, then fairly yielded at last to the 
universal impulse, took their hats, and hurried 
to the streets with the curiosities and pulsations 
of ordinary mortals. Those who were walking 
about say there was little levity, almost no 
mockery, but the aspect and conversation of 
the people were generally grave and thoughtful 
and deeply interested. 

The Marquis of Bute, Royal Commissioner, 
and grand signior, was keeping state at Holy- 
rood. Troops of cavalry, mounted on their 
proud coursers, and glittering in armour, with 
b&nner and trumpet — all the mimicry of out- 
ward pomp and force — were circling round the 
palace. Carriages and equipages were roll- 
ing down ; richly caparisoned steeds with their 
lordly riders. By mid - day the long spacious 
Chamber of State was filled with a splendour 
such as old Holyrood does not often now 



270 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

exhibit, — the representative of royalty, the 
highest of the nobility, ermined judges, star- 
bespangled warriors, and the dark array of the 
clergy still national; the whole scene adorned 
with cheeks as fair, and eyes as bright, and 
smiles as gay, as if the court of Mary Stuart 
were revived. But the air was electrical for 
all that ; any turn of the wind might puff its 
black cloud; passions are all the more intense 
when repressed under the show of easy non- 
chalance. This Chamber of State is hung with 
the so-called portraits of the Scottish kings, 
from Fergus downwards; amongst the rest is 
one, somewhat tolerable, of William of the 
'glorious Revolution.' The Royal Commis- 
sioner was standing opposite, in a circle of all 
that was outwardly august, and imposing, and 
venerable in the nation — surely it was the very 
marriage-day of Church and State ! — when this 
picture of King William, accidentally unfas- 
tened, broke away from the wall, and came 
down with hollow sound upon the floor. A 
voice like Cassandra's proclaimed — * There goes 
the Revolution settlement !' 

Marshal the carriage of State, ye equeries, 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 271 

with the eight gorgeously plumed steeds, and 
the scarlet-shining riders ! Sound the trum- 
pets ! beat the drums ! form and ride forth with 
a clatter, O British cavalry! Nobles, judges, 
magistrates, march in your long lines up the 
crowded streets, and descend for solemn worship 
at old St Giles, Then, service over, renew your 
martial music, renew the march, down the High 
Street, along the North Bridge, and halt the 
procession at the gates of St. Andrew's. 

The ever-increasing multitude, who have been 
floating about the town all day in different 
quarters, now gather and concentrate near this 
church, and await the birth of events. The 
galleries are crammed with the nine-hours' occu- 
pants ; the back seats below are now filled ; and 
the ministers and elders pour in hastily, till every 
seat in the body of the church holds its man. 

Welsh, always calm and dignified, enters and 
takes his Moderator's chair; Chalmers on his 
left. The Commissioner next appears, and 
fills his chair of state. After the opening de- 
votions, and after the great assemblage had 
resumed their seats, there was a bending for- 
ward, and a universal cry of 'Hush! hush!' 



272 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

which would have drowned the voice of a 
Stentor. The first confused hubbub died away 
into a silence like that of the sepulchre. 

'Fathers and brethren!' Welsh began, and 
every accent circulated through the breathless 
assembly. 

After some words of preface and explanation, 
he thus concluded: 'We protest that ... it is 
and shall be lawful for us ... to withdraw to 
a separate place of meeting, for the purpose of 
taking steps ... for separating in an orderly 
way from the Establishment. . . . And we now 
withdraw accordingly, humbly and solemnly ac- 
knowledging the hand of the Lord in the things 
which have come upon us, because of our mani- 
fold sins, and the sins of the Church and nation/ 

He bowed to the Commissioner, left his seat, 
and walked down the aisle. Chalmers, who 
had been standing at his side with an air of 
abstraction, now seized his hat and followed 
him with hasty strides, as if impatient to be 
gone. Other venerable fathers — Gordon, Mac- 
donald, Macfarlane — rose and departed The 
people in the galleries, spell -bound at first, 
broke out into one rapturous shout, which, 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 273 

however, the serious feeling of the assemblage 
speedily quelled. Then minister after minister 
passed away — elder after elder— seat after seat 
was left empty. More than 400 ministers (it 
was soon afterwards increased to 500) — a still 
larger number of the elderhood — forsook, what 
they now pitied and scorned as the ENSLAVED 

Church. 

The one great shout inside is the warning to 
the multitudes outside ; and as the well-known 
faces appear under the pillars in front, the cry 
reverberates through the streets — ' They come ! 
they come!' One loud ringing cheer after 
another hails the twenties, and then the fifties, 
and then the hundred, and then the hundred 
after hundred. A voice from St. Andrew's 
Church sounds over all Scotland — ' CONSCIENCE 

IS KING !' 

They came out in no regular order ; but 
the dense multitudes gathering and forming a 
narrow lane, they were forced into an unin- 
tended procession of three and three, a quarter 
of a mile in length ; and through the crowded 
streets, and under the crowded windows, they 
made their way to the hall of Canonmills. 



274 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

In a quiet room in another part of the city, 
Lord Jeffrey was sitting and reading his book. 
A friend burst in upon him : ' What do you 
think? more than 400 are out!' Flinging the 
book across the room, and springing to his 
feet, Jeffrey exclaimed, with an enthusiasm and 
patriotic ardour which his trained nature would 
seldom permit : ' I'm proud of my country ; 
there is not another country upon earth where 
such a deed could have been done !' 

Now they fill their new assembly in the 
Canonmills. Amid acclamations, continued for 
several* minutes, Chalmers takes the chair. He 
calls them to join in the psalm — 

* O send Thy light forth and Thy truth ; 

Let them be guides to me, 
And bring me to Thine holy hill, 
Ev*n where Thy dwellings be.' 

As the 3000 voices swell through the building, 
a ray of sunshine — rare on that cloudy day — 
suddenly breaks in and irradiates the assembly. 
Many present remembered the text of Chalmers 
six months before: 'Unto the upright there 
ariseth light in the darkness/ 

'Reverend fathers and brethren!' said Chal- 



THE FIVE HUNDRED. 275 

mere, in opening the Free Assembly, ' it is well 
that you should have been strengthened by 
your Master in heaven to make the surrender 
you have done of everything that is dear to 
nature, casting aside all your earthly depen- 
dence, rather than offend conscience. . . . It is 
well that you have made for the present a 
clean escape from this condemnation ; and that, 
in the issue of the contest between a sacrifice 
of principle and a sacrifice of your worldly 
possessions, you have resolved upon the latter ; 
while to the eye of sense you are without a 
provision and a home, embarked upon a wide 
ocean of uncertainty, save that great and 
generous certainty which is apprehended by 
the eye of faith — that God reigneth, and that 
He will not forsake the families of the faithful 1' 



j^Stik. 




XXL 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 




HIS disruption — this abandonment of 
their means of living by 500 ministers, 
with the adherence of a large propor- 
tion of the elderhood, and of at least one-third 
of the population — the middle class very gene- 
rally, and the more intelligent of the peasantry 
almost entire — for the high and somewhat meta- 
physical principle that they could no longer 
preserve the ordinances of religion free and in- 
tact from foreign secular interference, — this dis- 
ruption in the Church of Scotland, we say, took 
every one by surprise. Whether to the credit 
or the discredit of Scotland — whether a thing to 
be admired or a thing to be laughed at — whether 
the step was sublime or ridiculous — the excla- 
mation of Jeffrey was probably correct : ' There 

276 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 277 



is not another country upon earth where such 
a deed could have been done/ No people are 
fonder or more saving of their money than the 
Scots : none will spend or sacrifice it more 
readily when there is a cause which stirs their 
souls. This they have proved over and over 
again in their history. Their parsimony and 
their magnanimity are equally unrivalled ; and 
when they really feel, they unreservedly act To 
the mere worldly-minded, and the mere men of 
fine thin literature, the Disruption was, is, and 
ever shall be, to the world's end, a mystery in- 
explicable, but a mystery so silly and stupid as 
not to be worth inquiring into. Explain it to 
them as you will from the standpoint of the 
men who made the sacrifice (which is the only 
just way to understand any act), the cuckoo 
answer is always the same : ' We can make 
nothing of it ; it seems all a shadow.' Yes, and 
must ever be so with you ; let us therefore hold 
the subject to be definitively closed. The Peel 
Government were shocked at the catastrophe, 
foresaw the disasters which must follow, felt 
that they had been misled by their informants ; 
but their informants had themselves been mis- 



278 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

led by the littleness of their own minds, and the 
gossip of dinner-tables. The Moderate leaders 
— able, sincere, fighting like honest men, but 
too worldly in their estimates — saw with sur- 
prise, but also, I believe, with the deepest re- 
gret, the departure of so many hundreds of their 
noble foemen. The Forty Trimmers, who ex- 
pected to step into the lead which k the Evan- 
gelicals had abandoned, were surprised to find 
themselves quietly extinguished, reduced to a 
nullity in the Church courts ; for these small 
mincing men had no chance in the struggle for 
existence with hardy plants like the vigorous 
James Robertson and the quick-witted Robert 
Lee. Those Presbyterian mummies— the grey- 
headed licentiates, who had been lying dead, as 
in their coffins, to all occupation for the last 
twenty years — found themselves, to their surprise 
and delight, in the hurry of filling up vacant 
charges, installed, all of a sudden, in the churches 
and manses and stipends which the fanatics had 
so obligingly left as a spoil for the camp-fol- 
lowers. The other Seceders of Scotland, having 
their own histories of sacrifice and exertion, 
were less surprised than the various conventional 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 279 

classes. But the numbers exceeded even their 
anticipations ; and, forgetting old strifes, they 
held out, to this last great contingent, the hand 
of fellowship, which is like, ere long, to be the 
bond of unity. Finally, the ministers who came 
out were themselves surprised at the largeness 
of the host, and the unanimity and generosity 
with which they were followed. 

But amid the general surprise, there was one 
man who felt none. Chalmers was perhaps sur- 
prised at the numbers, but he was not surprised 
at the copiousness of the supplies which were 
pouring in upon him. He sat, diligent, steady, 
and alert, at the door of the exchequer, true 
to his own watchword, ' Organize, organize, 
organize ! ' He knew the pulse of his country ; 
he knew how many princely donors there were ; 
he knew what would be the proceeds of the 
' accumulation of littles ; ' he could count on his 
revenues to a penny. He felt no surprise as the 
hundreds of thousands were rolling in for the 
support of the men who had made the sacrifice, 
without having the least definite prospect where 
their sustenance was to come from. Starting 
up at length, he gave the signal to Scotland (in 



28o THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the motto to his circulars) — ' The God of heaven, 
He will prosper us ; therefore we, His servants, 
will arise and build ! ' 

In his Horce Sabbaticce, being his meditations 
and prayers in his Sunday reading of the Scrip- 
tures, begun in 1841, his most secret desires, in 
entering upon his novel and arduous task, are 
disclosed : — 

' O heavenly Father/ he implores, ' do Thou 
open more and more the hearts and hands of 
the Church's friends, that it may be adequately 
supported for the great end of providing the 
lessons of Thy blessed Gospel to all the families 
of Scotland. . . . Thou knowest, O Lord, my 
conflicts and difficulties and fears. To Thee I 
would flee for refuge, and implore Thy blessed 
guidance throughout the remainder of my work 
in connection with the Free Church of Scotland. 
Enable me to clear my way aright among the 
opposing elements, and to trace a path in skil- 
fulness and with safety through the labyrinth of 
misconceptions which are on every side of me. 
And let me never forget that, however essential 
her outward business might be, her strength lies 
in her spirituality! ' 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 281 

Leaving the routine of public discussions, 
and the conduct of executive affairs, as well 
as foreign missions, and the various miscel- 
laneous objects of the Free Church, to the 
younger ministers, and even more largely to 
the committees of lay members, numbering 
amongst them some of the most esteemed 
gentlemen and of the ablest business men in 
Scotland, Chalmers concentrated the* whole 
time and attention which he could spare from 
his classes and other avocations, on that which, 
humanly speaking, was the keystone of the 
whole arch — the consolidating and fixing of 
the Sustentation Fund. He had no confidence 
in impulses ; they must be confirmed into habits, 
and habits must be moulded into institutions ; 
but from his experience he had unbounded 
confidence in the liberality of Christian zeal, 
when it was once organized and methodically 
directed. Of the 1200 ministers of the Estab- 
lishment, 500 had come out Chalmers calcu- 
lated that for adequate sustentation there was 
required a yearly revenue of ^100,000 ; and the 
very first year the central and supplementary 
funds together yielded about ;£ 150,000. The 



282 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

central fund alone allowed a minimum equal 
dividend of £105. In the same time 500 
churches had been erected, out of the central 
and the local building funds. In the year 
1843-4, the central building fund amounted 
to £85,300; the local building fund, in 1843, 
to £142,000; in 1844, to £100,000. The exist- 
ing ministry being decently provided for, and 
the first required number of churches being 
erected, Chalmers could now resume the para- 
mount mission of his life, — that of carrying 
his local institutions — church and school and 
pastoral superintendence — into every corner of 
the land. He thus addressed the Free Assembly 
at their meeting in May 1844 : — 

' If we do what we might and what we ought, 
we will not only be able to repair the whole 
Disruption, but will get landed in the great and 
glorious work of Church extension. . . . This will 
open a boundless field for the liberality of 
our Christian brethren — a bright and beautiful 
ulterior, to which every eye should be directed, 
that . . . every heart may be elevated by Jfche 
magnificent aim, to cover with the requisite 
number of churches, and, with God's blessing on 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 283 

the means, to educate, and, in return for our 
performance and prayers, to Christianize the 
whole of Scotland/ 

I cannot pursue the subject into further de- 
tails. I can only throw the main financial facts 
into a rapid summary. They read more like the 
figures of the Imperial exchequer than the ac- 
count of the revenues of a single denomination 
in the smallest member of the United Kingdom. 

The number of ministers that came out in 

1843 was about 500; in 1868, the Free Church 
ministry was 950. 

Within the same period — twenty-five years — 
there have been erected 900 churches, 650 
manses, 600 schools, 3 colleges, a noble As- 
sembly Hall, and an extensive and valuable 
library has been instituted. 

The central and local building funds have 
together raised £ 1,605,000. 

The value of property and other assets be- 
longing to the body is £2,000,000. 

The yearly revenue for all purposes, which 
in 1863 was £343,000, in 1868 was £421,000. 

The Sustentation Fund, in particular, which in 

1844 was £146,000, in 1868 was £265,600. 



284 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Although the ministry have nearly doubled, 
the equal dividend, which in 1844 was £105, 
in 1868 was £150; and it is now determined 
that the minimum shall be raised to £200. 
Besides, 600 of the ministers, nearly two-thirds, 
receive supplementary contributions from their 
congregations. 

The central subscriptions, and the local sup- 
plements, do not prejudice one another; they 
are found to react favourably upon each other, 
and mutually to increase. It is also found that 
the aid-receiving congregations are diminishing 
in number, and the self-sustaining and aid-giving 
are on the increase. 

The average stipend of the ministers is even 
at present over £200, and will speedily be in- 
creased. 

In addition, there are the missions, home 
and foreign, and innumerable funds, — as, for the 
Ante-Disruption ministers, for aged ministers, 
for their widows and orphans, etc., — all most 
liberally supported. 

The total amount raised for colleges has been 
^194,620; for schools, ^347,701 ; for the ministry, 
£4,899,155 \ — in all, about 5^ millions. 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 285 

The whole known and recorded contributions 
during these twenty-five years — apart from large 
private benefactions and donations which can 
never be ascertained — amount to eight million 
and sixty-six thousand pounds. 

Instead of drying up, or there being any 
difficulty of collection, we have the testimony 
of Dr. Robert Buchanan, the able historian of 
The Ten Years* Conflict, who has always been at 
the centre of the movement, and who has long 
been the administrator of the finance : ' I doubt 
if there is any other revenue in the kingdom, 
civil or ecclesiastical, that comes in with such 
reliable regularity as our Free Church Sustenta- 
tion Fund/ 

I do not say that the present tremor which 
runs through all Church Establishments — the 
sort of shudder that is felt just before the vessel 
goes down — is wholly attributable to the disrup- 
tion of the Scottish Church in 1843. Many 
other dissolvents have been at work during 
the past quarter of a century. The Establish- 
ments have long given offence by many abuses, 
many glaring inconsistencies with the idea and 
primitive type of the Christian Church, by in- 



286 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

ternal dissensions, and by a political spirit 
generally in opposition to the opinions and 
movements of the great body of the people. 
Dissent, if not gaining much ground in point 
of numbers, has been growing in wealth, in im- 
portance, in the intelligence and status of its 
members, in political weight, and altogether in 
heaviness of counterpoise to its favoured rivals. 
The 'masses,' as they are called, have very 
much fallen off from connection with any of the 
denominations ; but if they have not gone to 
strengthen the Dissenters, their withdrawment 
has shaken the foundations — the raison d'itre 
—of the Establishments, and taken away from 
them the support which is derived from the 
mere presence of a great mass, however inert 
it may be, and however destitute of any active 
principle. Our thinking, unprejudiced men, on 
the other hand, are becoming more and more 
averse to the State or Government, which is the 
universal trustee of the nation, identifying itself 
with any one particular sect, and helping and 
distinguishing it above all the rest ; and they 
believe, especially, that religious teaching will 
be all the purer when it is let alone by Govern- 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 287 

ment, and that independent zeal will be more 
effectual than clerical officialism, hanging on 
the nod of prime ministers and chancellors and 
worldly superiors. But if these and many other 
weakening causes have been at work against 
Establishments, I think it is now felt by all 
thoughtful observers, that the Scottish Disrup- 
tion, followed by the successful operations of 
the Free Church, has had by far the most 
undermining effects. It was the first breaking- 
up of the concrete of Establishments ; it broke 
up the most popular and least burdensome of 
them all, and drove out the ablest advocates of 
the principle ; and then the experience of the 
Free Church has substantiated that the reli- 
gious teaching of the people, instead of suffer- 
ing from disestablishment, may, by a skilful 
but easy and simple organization, be rooted 
deeper, and made more vital and effective, than 
when nursed by endowments, and rendered 
sickly by the hothouse applications of the State. 
This experience has made a deep and visible 
impression upon public opinion. There is little 
of the old superstition about the sacredness of 
Establishments ; little of the old horror about 



288 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



leaving religion, without human props, to the 
omnipotence of its Author, and the faith and 
love of His followers. Statesmen, tired of the 
interminable Church debates, are now convinced 
that the whole useful and blessed influences of 
religion upon society may be secured by the 
free organization of the various Christian com- 
munities. 

The true working clergymen in all the Estab- 
lishments are now satisfied, that even in a'tem- 
poral point of view — as a business question 
of living, which every man, clerical as well as 
lay, must consider — they are as safe, if not 
safer, with the voluntary liberalities of the 
Christian people, managed by superior organi- 
zation, than with the endowments of the State, 
so unjustly divided, and so capriciously be- 
stowed. The working clergymen have no fears, 
whatever may be the trepidation of dignitaries, 
pluralists, and sinecurists. The laity in the 
episcopally governed churches are beginning 
to sec that it is only by taking down the hostile 
buttresses of Establishment, and throwing open 
the doors and passages to wholesome ventila- 
tion—only in this way that they are to regain 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 289 

their legitimate privileges, that they can lift up 
a potential voice in the councils of their Church, 
and apply some check to sacerdotal mummeries 
and pretensions. High Church is fretting under 
the Privy Council ; Low Church is groaning 
under Ritualism, which no Court of Arches can 
stop ; Broad Church, free by the letter of the 
law, is recovering some scruples of honour, feel- 
ing that even the loose Thirty-nine Articles may 
be too far strained, and is beginning to resign 
its fellowships and livings. The old peers and 
squires, who used to swear by the Church, 
get little help from the clergy at the elections, 
and see a good chance of pre-emptions and 
redemptions in the scramble of Church lands ; 
and they talk over their wine, it is said, ' What 
is the good of these parsons? the Methodist 
fellows carry most votes/ So the best motives 
and the basest motives of human nature are all 
pushing in the way to disestablishment. 

It must always be remembered, however, — 
what we have formerly had occasion to re- 
mark, — that, notwithstanding his success, the 
Disruption was to Chalmers a sad and dire 
necessity. He never altered his opinions as 



290 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

to the economic and religious expediency of 
a Church Establishment He never trusted 
Voluntaryism, except as a useful auxiliary ; 
so little did he trust its gushes, that it will 
have been seen, from the previous explanations, 
that the very essence of his financial plans was 
to collect and guide and store its streams 
of supply into a central reservoir for fixed 
distribution, — in other words, to assimilate 
Voluntaryism, as near as he could, to the 
independence, permanency, and regularity of 
a State endowment We have already shown, 
by quotations of the time, how his mind was 
harrowed by the Disruption. It dispelled all 
his dearly-cherished visions of a full territorial 
extension of churches and schools, the reclama- 
tion of the large towns, the amelioration of the 
poorer classes, the raising of the standard of reli- 
gion and virtue amongst the whole people. 

Another heavy blow fell upon him about the 
same time, and added to his burden of disap- 
pointment That was, the excited cry from 
1 841 to 1845 for a change in the Poor-Laws (as 
we have previously related), — a cry for compul- 
sory assessment, liberal legal relief, and for dis- 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 291 

carding all dependence upon that spontaneous 
charity which he had always inculcated. This 
cry was raised by a good man, Dr. Alison of 
Edinburgh, — within his own sphere of medical 
science a very able man, — known, respected, 
and beloved through the whole community ; 
whose own goodness and charity was an ever- 
flowing fountain ; whose hours were worth 
guineas for the richest patients, but who conse- 
crated his whole leisure to the poorest and most 
wretched, to the wrecks of disease in forgotten 
cellars and garrets. In the mornings, the 
street where he lived was inundated with half- 
lazars and half-beggars, till the joke, and 
probably the fact, was, that he had brought 
down the rents of the neighbourhood. In the 
afternoons, when finished with his class, he 
might be seen — a large, heavy, rather unwieldy 
man as he was, and advanced in years — posting 
down to the Cowgate of Edinburgh, fast as if 
he had been called by a duchess — to the lowest 
dens of want, disease, infamy, and misery. A 
favourite medical student, wishing to consult 
him about something, caught him one day as he 
was leaving the class-room. ' Come away, 9 said 



292 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Alison, putting his arm in the young man's ; * I 
am in a hurry. I have about two hours to visit 
my patients ; you can tell me your story on the 
way.' In a few minutes the student discovered 
that his patients resided, not in the mansions of 
Moray Place, but in the fever- beds of the Cow- 
gate. I have many a time watched him the 
mile and a half between the College and his 
house in Heriot Row — the tall, bulky form, 
the lurching walk, the inevitable umbrella, the 
long, massive, ruddy countenance, the bright 
brown compassion-speaking eyes, the saluting 
citizens, — and as he drew himself along, the 
whole beggars and diseased creatures and im- 
postors of Edinburgh seemed to follow his 
track ; they stalked him from street to street 
like a deer, then pounced upon him at some 
corner where he could not make his escape ; 
and after a menace from the big umbrella, and 
an angry shake of the head, some words of 
misery reached his ear (ah, well they knew that 
quickly melting heart!), and he was sure to 
drop some small coin into their hands. Who 
could withstand such an angel of mercy when 
pleading for the poor ? And it may be remem- 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 293 



bered that 1840-41 were seasons of stagnation 
and poignant distress in most of our manufac- 
turing and commercial towns. Alison — all soft- 
ness of nature, and daily amid these scenes of 
want and WQe — was driven nearly distracted, 
and was inflamed to as high a pitch of enthu- 
siasm for instant and copious relief, as Chal- 
mers cherished for prudent assistance, and that 
only from the stores of spontaneous charity. 
The Scotch — so tender-hearted when you get 
through the weather-beaten skin — were dissolved 
in tears at his appeals of pity ; and almost at 
his bidding they passed their Poor-Law of 
1845, which, as we have proved by numerous 
evidences, they now bitterly regret. Even 
Chalmers had no chance for the moment 
against such a man. It was a question, not of 
sense, but of sensibility. Chalmers, in feeling, 
was as benevolent as Alison. Without drawing 
any invidious comparison between two such 
excellent men, Chalmers had done at least as 
much actual and corporeal good in his own 
sphere to the poor, as Alison. But Chalmers 
was an inductionist, and could look at the facts 
on all sides ; Alison looked only at the disease 



294 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

^^— — — ^^M^— — I I— — — ^— ^—^—^i^— ■ ■■■■■■■ ■— — i^— ^— ^m-m 

and misery. Chalmers was an adept in Car- 
lyle's dismal science, and could repress mere 
emotion, in the belief that there was a better, 
surer, though perhaps slower way of relieving 
poverty. Alison could not bear, even for an 
hour, the pain, the suffering, the groans of his 
fellow-creatures : ' Give instant relief, listen to 
your heart, not to political economy/ Chalmers 
for once was fairly beat; his facts were pro- 
nounced moonshine, his eloquence treated as 
rant, his philanthropy at best a good-natured 
delusion. The country said proudly, * Yes, we 
will compulsorily assess ourselves for the full 
relief of all our poor.' The old man was 
discomfited, was sometimes nettled, at the 
defiance of the lessons which he had been 
teaching and proving for so many years. Much 
as he esteemed the general virtues of Alison, 
he intensely believed him, in this matter, to 
be acting on dangerous impulses, to be short- 
sighted and mischievous. ' Dr. Alison, sir/ he 
exclaimed one day when his name happened 
to be introduced, 'Dr. Alison is a mere lump 
of benevolence !' 

But, with his habitual self-denial, humility, 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANIZED. 295 

and patient waiting, he confessed that in both 
instances — territorial extension, and the extinc- 
tion of pauperism — his deep fundamental con- 
victions had been blasted ; and he must leave 
any germs which might be sound and sterling 
in them, to be realized by other hands in 
God's own time. He bids adieu to his past; 
his ploughshare is broken, and he must turn to 
other fields. How touching is the old man's 
surrender of the darling projects of a lifetime, 
and his prayer, not so much that his own 
conceptions should ever be passed, as that the 
welfare of mankind might hereafter be pro- 
moted, in comfort, in instruction, in religion, 
by such means, whatsoever they might be, as 
Providence, in the end, might determine to be 
the best ! Thus he speaks in the Horn Sab- 
baticce, in his meditations upon the tower of 
Babel, and its failure, and the scattering of the 
builders : — 

1 1 have- been set on the erection of my Babels 
— pn the establishment of at least two great 
objects, which, however right in themselves, 
became the mere idols of a fond and proud 
imagination, in as far as they are not prosecuted 



296 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

i ■ — r - n i - 

with a feeling of dependence upon God, and a 
supreme desire after His glory* These two 
objects are — the deliverance of our empire from 
pauperism, and the establishment of an adequate 
machinery for the Christian and general instruc- 
tion of our whole population. I am sure that, 
in the advancement of these, I have not taken 
God enough with me, and trusted more to my 
own arguments and combinations among my 
fellows than to prayers. There has been no 
confounding of tongues to prevent a common 
understanding, so indispensable to that co-ope- 
ration without which there can be no success ; 
but without this miracle my views have been 
marvellously impeded by a diversity of opinions 
as great as if it had been brought on by a 
diversity of language. The barrier in the way 
of access to other men's minds has been as 
obstinate and unyielding as if I had spoken to 
them in foreign speech; and though I cannot 
resign my convictions, I must now — and surely 
it is good to be so taught — I must now, under 
the experimental sense of my own helplessness, 
acknowledge with all humility, yet with hope 
in the efficacy of a blessing from on high still 



THE FREE CHURCH ORGANTZED. 297 

in reserve for the day of God's own appointed 
time, that except the Lord build the house, the 
builders build in vain. In Thine own good 
time, Almighty Father! regenerate this earth, 
and gather its people into one happy and 
harmonious and righteous family.' 




XXII. 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 




!0R these sixteen or seventeen years 
past we have been studying Chalmers 
only in his most severe and strenuous 
labours, — first, for the defence and extension of 
the Established Church; and then, the Establish- 
ment having failed him, for the organization of 
a new Church throughout the land, free in its 
discipline and action, and with a full equip- 
ment of schools and other civilising agencies. 
We have been missing all this while the blinks 
of relief we used to enjoy, either in glimpses 
into the domestic interior, or by following him 
in his journeys to London and other great cities, 
or in his wanderings to and fro through the 
country. After the strain we have been endur- 
ing, we feel the want of relaxation. Let us see 

298 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 299 

what he has been doing all this time. Has he 
been always on the stretch ? has the bow been 
always bent? No indeed! he has contrived 
from time to time to have his pastimes and 
recreations. He has had more variety, more 
running about, more merriment, than any of 
those who have nothing else to do than pleasure- 
hunting, which generally means disappointment- 
catching. For pleasure, like the good milch-cow, 
yields most to those who come to her at due 
intervals ; she runs dry to those who are always 
pulling and draining at her. 

In the course of 1830, to go back to the time 
when he was first settled in Edinburgh, he was 
twice in the great Metropolis. The first time 
was to give evidence before a Parliamentary 
committee on Irish pauperism, when we find 
him greatly taken out, as usual, amongst the 
higher nobility, and politicians, and the digni- 
taries of the Church of England. He was 
nominated one of His Majesty's chaplains for 
Scotland; and the honour was enhanced by a 
letter from Sir Robert Peel, announcing that 
the appointment was conferred 'exclusively in 
consideration of his high character and eminent 



30o THOMAS CHALMERS. 

acquirements and services.' When in London at 
this time he was much with the philanthropists 
— with Wilberforce, Mrs. Fry, the Buxtons, and 
the Gurneys. One of the young Gurneys, who 
was with him for several days at Wilberforce's, 
draws a Plutarch-like comparison between the 
two men, of which we extract the closing sen- 
tences. ' I often think that particular men bear 
about with them an analogy to particular animals. 
Chalmers is like a good-tempered lion ; Wilber- 
force is like a bee. Chalmers can say a pleasant 
thing now and then, and laugh when he has 
said it, and he has a strong touch of humour 
in his countenance ; but in general he is grave, 
his thoughts grow to a great size before they 
are uttered. Wilberforce sparkles with life and 
wit, and the characteristic of his mind is rapid 
productiveness. A man might be in Chalmers's 
company for an hour, especially in a party, with- 
out knowing who or what he was, though in 
the end he would be sure to be detected by 
some display of powerful originality. Wilber- 
force, except when fairly asleep, is never latent 
Chalmers knows how to veil himself in a decent 
cloud ; Wilberforce is always in sunshine. . . . 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 301 

Yet these persons, distinguished as they are 
from the world at large, and from each other, 
present some admirable points of resemblance. 
Both of them are broad thinkers, and liberal 
feelers ; both of them are arrayed in humility, 
meekness, and charity ; both appear to hold self 
in little reputation ; above all, both love the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and reverently acknowledge Him 
to be their only Saviour/ 

The next visit to London was in the end of 
the same year, when he attended as one of 
the deputation from the General Assembly to 
present a congratulatory address to the new 
monarch, William IV. On his way he paid a 
visit, which he never failed to do when in his 
power, to his sister Jane in Gloucestershire ; 
also to Oxford, where the college magnates 
shower attentions upon him — Whately, Burton, 
Shuttleworth, WhewelL As he was much in- 
clined to silence in miscellaneous company, he 
felt greatly relieved at Oxford. 'The people 
here all love better to speak than to hear; so 
that I, who give way on these occasions, had 
less to do in that way.' His descriptions of the 
Court ceremonies, and of his own preparations 



302 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and feelings, are naive in the extreme — a mixture 
of genuine Conservative loyalty, with irrepres- 
sible laughter at the staginess of the whole 
affair. The deputation were up at seven, and 
were in a flutter all the morning with ' dressing, 
and anxiety on all hands to be as snod (neat) 
as possible.' But they were not agreed how and 
when to make their bows to royalty. 'I fear 
we shall misbehave.' Assembled in their hotel 
at one, but in frightful consternation as their 
cocked hats had not come. Having ultimately 
procured their fitting head-gear, they drove in 
four coaches; were ushered into the palace, 
amid a dazzling throng of generals and 
admirals, and chancellors, and primates, and 
flunkeys, who were the most imposingly 
dressed of all. In all this blaze of grandeur 
the Presbyterian deputation were by no 
means eclipsed. 'Our deputation made a 
most respectable appearance among them, 
with our cocked three-cornered hats under 
our arms, our bands upon our breasts, and 
our gowns of Geneva upon our backs. ' Mine/ 
he continues — for misfits will happen where 
there is hasty tailoring — 'mine did not lap so 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 303 

close as I would have liked, so that I was 
twice as thick as I should be ' — which must have 
been an aldermanic girth ; but then he had this 
consolation, 'it must have* been palpable to 
every eye, at the first glance, that I was the 
greatest man there/ They made their bows 
when they reached the throne, without mis- 
behaving themselves ; read their little address, 
received the little answer in return, then knelt 
and kissed the king's hand. 'I went through 
my kneel and my kiss very comfortably/ The 
king exercised his royal genius by holding a 
conversation with each of them. As we poor 
plebeians have a strange cacoethes to know 
what kings and queens say, we shall tran- 
scribe entire the conversation with Chalmers, 
for the satisfaction of anxious minds. * His first 
question to me was, " Do you reside constantly 
in Edinburgh ? " I said, " Yes, an't please your 
majesty;" and his next question was, "How 
long do you remain in town?" I said, "Till 
Monday, an't please your majesty/" What a 
model of simplicity in questions and answers! 
.0 if the Civil Service examinations were only 
such, what a relief would it be to many an 



304 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

over-crammed youth ! We humblest plebeians 
need no longer be afraid of appearing at Court, 
so far as regards any strain upon the intellect 
Afterwards they kissed Queen Adelaide's hand, 
'and then retired with three bows, which the 
queen returned most gracefully, but with all 
the simplicity, I had almost said bashfulness, of 
a timid country girl.' A queen bashful! that 
at least is a royal fashion which we recommend 
to the imitation of all girls of the period. 

At the levee, by-the-bye, he saw Talleyrand ; 
and the image of him is striking, has almost 
historic value. ' Far the most interesting object 
there was Talleyrand — whom I could get 
nobody to introduce me to — splendidly attired 
as the French ambassador, attended by some 
French military officers. / gazed with interest 
on the old shrivelled face of hint, and thought I 
could see there the lines of deep reflection and 
lofty talent His moral physiognomy, however, 
is a downright blank. He was by far the most 
important continental personage in the room, 
and drew all eyes.' The bold, frank, gladsome 
eye of Chalmers, gazing with interest c on the 
old shrivelled face' of Talleyrand — is it not a 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 305 



subject for a picture? — wisdom, in all its sim- 
plicity, contrasted with artifice, in all its 
subtle machinations ; like the moon in cloud- 
less serenity looking down upon the abyss of 
the Dead Sea, beneath whose scum -covered 
waters lie the wrecks of so many guilty things 
of the past ! 

For three years from this date (1830), he has 
been kept very close at work on revisions of 
his Lectures, on Bridgewater Treatises, and his 
cherished book on Political Economy, which 
was published in 1832. Rocks are now also 
ahead, in navigating the vessel of the Church. 
She is grinding along the Scylla of the Volun- 
tary controversy on the one side; on the 
other, frowns the Charybdis of Non-intrusion, 
on which she is ultimately fated to break. But 
he escapes, in the summer of 1833, from his 
toils and cares and logomachies. What is he to 
do this time ? — * to gratify an ambition he long 
had cherished, and lived to realize, of having 
seen and ascended to the summit of all the 
cathedrals of England. 9 Two inducing causes 
were probably urging him on : a growing attrac- 
tion to what he styled, in his alliterative manner, 

U 



306 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

' the might and the mastery ' of the vene- 
rable Establishment of England — an attraction 
still more stimulated by his antagonism with 
the Voluntary Dissenters ; and over and above, 
his innate passion for the constructive arts, 
especially the higher productions of architecture * 
and statuary, in preference to the other fine 
arts, as, for example, painting and music. Next 
to his pure, almost commingling love of nature, 
which lay deep in the inmost chords of his 
being, and seldom sought expression in the 
mere rhapsodies of outer description, was his 
love for the architectural masterpieces, — fine 
palaces, great castles, huge -spanning bridges, 
and cathedrals with their 'long-drawn aisles 
and fretted vaults.' He seldom takes notice of 
paintings ; and in all his visits to London, and 
even amongst the cathedrals with their solemn 
services, he scarcely once gives utterance to any 
musical emotion. 

It has been questioned whether, like so many 
men of genius, who have been masters of 
the most delicious harmony in their writings, 
such as Burns, Scott, Coleridge, Goethe, he 
was really destitute of what is usually termed 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 307 

an ear for music. From all that I can learn, 
he had only an ear for good marked tunes (as 
was the case with Burns and Scott) ; but all 
the higher concerted pieces were to him a mere 
confusion, without object or meaning. He was 
present at an evening party, where a very ac- 
complished lady was discoursing most eloquent 
music from the fashionable opera of the day. 
When she was at the overture and the recita- 
tives he looked perplexed, as if listening to a 
medley of madness ; but when she struck upon 
some lively and expressive airs, he turned round 
with a look of great relief to the gentleman 
who was next to him, ' Do you know, sir, / love 
these lucid intervals ! ' 

His journey this time was down the Backbone 
of England, from Carlisle and Kendal, through 
the moorlands of the West Riding to the Peaks 
of Derbyshire, thence by Oxford to London, 
and thence again by Cambridge, through the 
eastern and north-eastern counties, studded with 
cathedrals, home into Scotland by the Borders. 

His love of nature comes out strongly amidst 
the fantastic limestone summits, and the fear- 
ful subterranean caverns, and the quiet pastoral 



308 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

valleys of the West Riding and of Derbyshire. 
Some of his descriptions are inimitable of their 
kind ; so exact, so minute, so crisply and pic- 
turesquely expressed, so concise yet so complete 
and vivid, lit up with fancy and feeling. They 
evince that, if his studies and the objects of his 
life had led that way, he would have excelled in 
many departments of literature, which he had 
little opportunity to cultivate, and for which it 
was commonly supposed he had not the faculty. 
His Journals all through this excursion are as 
full of incident as a novel, often as charming 
as a poem, and always as scrupulously correct 
and graphic as if he had been writing for a scien- 
tific magazine. They would have delighted old 
Humboldt ; and many of the passages would 
have deserved a place in his Cosmos, amongst 
his quotations from the perfect descriptions of 
natural scenery. 

We cannot; however, linger over those rich 
and attractive landscapes ; yet one cannot help 
at least dwelling a moment on his simple, broad, 
and all-embracing humanity. He took a gig 
and driver with him from Huddersfield all 
through the Derbyshire country. He reads 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 309 

his book in the gig, then diversifies by a chat 
with the driver, and finally conceives quite an 
attachment for him. ' Though it is a little more 
expensive, I always take him to the sights along 
with me. First, because I found a great igno- 
rance of Derbyshire curiosities in Huddersfield, 
and I want to make him more enlightened and 
enlarged than his fellow-citizens. Second, be- 
cause I always feel a strong reflex or secondary 
enjoyment in the gratifications of other people, 
so that the sympathy of his enjoyment greatly 
enhances my own. And thirdly, because I get 
amusement from the remarks of his simple 
wonderment, and not very sagacious observa- 
tion; and it has now passed into a standing 
joke with me, when leaving any of our exhibi- 
tions, that "there is no such fine sight to be seen 
at Huddersfield."' After several days of this 
homely and pleasing companionship, wondering 
and bantering together, the roads ih life of the 
professor and of the postboy divided at Mat- 
lock. Such a love was there in Chalmers, both 
human and heavenly, that a pathetic sweetness 
hangs over their parting. ' Here I parted with 
my honest and simple-hearted driver, having 



310 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

previously, and just before, ascertained from 
him his name. It is John Dean. He can 
scarcely read, he tells me ; and on this subject 
I gave him my solema advice, telling him . . . 
that many perish for lack of knowledge, and 
that he must prepare himself for an acquaint- 
ance with that precious Bible which is able to 
make him wise unto salvation, through the faith 
that is in Jesus Christ A person who has given 
you three days' service, and from whom you have 
extracted three days' amusement, has earned no 
slight claim to your permanent regard ; and I 
desire to treasure up and cherish, as one of the 
interesting reminiscences of my life, the idea of 
John Dean of Huddersfield! 

From Derbyshire, by Cambridge, to London, 
where he preaches on Sunday: the concourse 
quite unabated. Amongst the hearers, the Duke 
of Sussex, the Duke of Richmond, Lord John 
Russell, Sir Robert Peel. On Monday, to the 
House of Commons. Amongst others who 
came to him, Mr. Daniel O'Connell, 'who shook 
me most cordially by the hands, complimenting 
me on my evidence about the Irish poor-laws, 
saying that he was a disciple of mine upon that 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 31 1 

subject, and not of his own priest, Dr. Doyle. 
... It would have done your heart much good 
to have seen how closely and cordially Mr. 
Daniel O'Connell and your papa hugged and 
greeted each other in the Lower House of 
Parliament.' After some weeks in London, 
where he was more courted and admired than 
ever, he started, about the end of July, on his 
more special examination of the cathedrals, all 
through the eastern and north-eastern counties, 
and came out again upon his native heath 
somewhere in Liddesdale. His curiosity, and 
humanity, and intimacy with all ranks and 
classes, continue to afford the richest entertain- 
ment ; but space compels us to abstain from the 
tempting repast Everything confirms the re- 
mark of Gurney at Norwich: *I never saw a 
man who appeared to be more destitute of 
vanity, or less alive to any wish to be brilliant.' 

The years 1834 and 1835 rained thick with 
honours. He was elected a fellow, then one 
of the vice-presidents, of the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh ; a corresponding member of the 
Institute of France ; and at the annual com- 
memoration at Oxford, in 1835, he was invested 



3 i2 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

with the degree of Doctor of Laws. The two 
last honours had never previously been conferred 
upon any Scottish clergyman. 

Some years previously he had published his 
treatise in defence of Literary and Ecclesiastical 
Endowments. Amongst many other eulogiums 
on the English Universities, he declared, 'that 
there are no seminaries in Europe on which 
there sits a greater weight of accumulated glory 
than that which has been reflected, both on 
Oxford and Cambridge, by that long and bright 
train of descendants who have sprung from them. 
It is impossible to make even the bare perusal 
of their names, without the feeling that there 
has been summoned before the eye of the mind 
the panorama of all that has upheld the lustre, 
whether of England's philosophy or of England's 
patriotism, for centuries together.' The scholars 
of England had already, in the pages of the 
Quarterly Review, expressed their admiration of 
his Defence, and pronounced it ' a treatise which 
would alone have been sufficient to immortalize 
its author ; ' and now Oxford, by one of the 
proudest honours in her gift, and the welcome 
accorded to him by her sons, conveyed the tes- 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 313 

timony of her appreciation and gratitude. The 
late Lord Elgin, then a student at Oxford, and 
of a family always most intimate with Chal- 
mers, has left some reminiscences of the scene. 
' Rarely have I witnessed as much enthusiasm in 
the Oxford theatre as was manifested when he 
presented himself to go through the ceremony 
of admission. . . . Dr. Chalmers was himself 
deeply affected by the warmth with which he 
was greeted ; and I think I might almost venture 
to say, that he looked upon this visit to Oxford 
as one of the most pleasing incidents in his 
career.' Lord Elgin mentions many little traits 
of his character, full of that boyish delight which 
he always exhibited on such occasions. * I well 
remember his coming to my apartment at Mer- 
ton, before eight o'clock one morning, and tell- 
ing me of a sequestered court which he had 
found in a college into which he had strayed on 
his way from Christ Church, and the earnestness 
with which he claimed credit for having thus dis- 
covered for himself a spot of surpassing beauty, 
which could, he assured me, be known to few.' 

In commenting upon the marvellous effects 
which he produced as an orator, we have already 



3H THOMAS CHALMERS. 

sufficiently told the story of his appearance in 
London in the spring of 1838, when he delivered 
his lectures in defence of Established Churches, 
amid the uncontrollable ecstasies of the grandees 
of England, lay and spiritual, who for once for- 
got their frigidities, and shouted and clapped, 
started to their feet and hurrahed, quite as 
wildly as if they had belonged to the 'great 
unwashed/ 

We have also, under the same head, related 
at some length his visit to Paris, in the summer 
following, to be formally admitted as a member 
of the Institute. Notwithstanding difficulties 
of conversation, he was cordially received and 
highly honoured by the leading men of France, 
such as Guizot, Mignet, and, above all, the Duke 
de Broglie, Grand Seigneur of Normandy, of the 
purest French type of noble and of man. 

The Duke has died, eighty-five years of age, 
just as I am writing these pages (in the end of 
January 1870). Since the crime of the 2d De- 
cember 185 1, hopeless of true liberty in his time, 
he has wrapt himself up in retirement, in study, 
thought, and benevolence ; and the chroniclers 
of the passing moment have dropped him out 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 31 5 

of their calendar, until now, to announce his 
death. I have a love for setting suns ; I bow, 
in preference, to those whose course is run. 
I am tempted, therefore, to turn aside for a 
moment, and gaze in respect at the long line 
of continuous light which marks the setting of 
the Duke de Broglie. 

These Broglies were an old hardy Piedmon- 
tese stock, who came into France in the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth century, and before the 
end of it had produced three marshals, which in 
those feudal and military times was esteemed 
the highest dignity in France. The father of 
the Duke, about the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, entered upon the inheritance of all their 
extensive domains. He was amongst the nobles 
who threw up the feudal privileges of their 
caste in the earlier stages of the Revolution ; 
but he was also amongst those who perished 
under the guillotine in its later excesses. His 
son Victor, born in 1785, had protectors amongst 
the chiefs of the Revolution, and was enabled to 
retain the family estates. Having no taste for the 
military life, which had been the characteristic 
of his house, he applied himself to the study of 



316 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

» 
philosophy and literature, law and politics. He 

became, even when young, an accomplished 
scholar, savant, jurist, and adept both in the 
theory and practice of government Napoleon, 
who desired to surround his throne with the 
families of the ancient noblesse, showed him 
particular favour, made him auditor of the 
Council of State, and sent him on several im- 
portant embassies ; but he served the despot 
reluctantly, and had an innate repugnance to 
all arbitrary government On the restoration 
of the Bourbons in 1815, he was named a peer 
of France ; but he was no more favourable td 
reaction than to despotism ; and with Royer- 
Collard, Guizot, and other friends of moderate 
constitutional government, he founded the 
celebrated party of the Doctrinaires — the 
French Whigs — who were, in fact, the oppo- 
sition under the reigns of Louis XVIIL and 
Charles X. In 18 16 he married Albertine, 
daughter of Madame de Stael, who inherited 
much of the talent of her mother, and possessed 
in addition that gift of beauty which her mother 
wanted, and which she valued so highly, that 
she said 'she would willingly part with all her 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 317 

other gifts to obtain it/ Albertine was a fervent 
Protestant, the Duke a fervent Roman Catholic; 
but that difference of creed never disturbed a 
union the most affectionate and happy. The 
Duchess — young, beautiful, as we have said, and 
exquisitely charming, truly pious, yet fully alive 
to all the joys of life and all the advantages of 
her high position — loved the world as her mother 
had done, and, like her, was the ornament of 
society. Her reunions were for twenty years 
the delight of Paris, and called to mind the 
grand assemblies of former generations. The 
Duke had seen enough of revolution to shrink 
from all sudden and violent changes in the 
form of government ; yet his judgment told 
him that the elder Bourbons were incorrigible. 
He concurred in throwing off their yoke ; and, 
on the Revolution of July 1830, he at once de- 
clared himself in favour of Louis Philippe, and 
was nominated minister of public instruction. 
His political character and objects have been 
delineated by Guizot in his Memoirs. 'The 
Duke was more of a liberal than a democrat, 
and of a nature as refined as elevated. All 
disorderly revolutionary policy was as displeas- 



3 i8 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

ing to him as to me. Although differing in 
origin, situation, and also in character, we were 
united, not only by a friendship already of long 
continuance, but by an intimate community of 
general principles and sentiments, the most 
powerful of ties when it exists truly, which is 
rare.' 

In 1832 he was minister of foreign affairs, 
and asserted the rights of his office against 
the interferences of Louis Philippe, whose error 
and ruin as a sovereign was, that, not contented 
simply to reign, he must also govern. ' Louis 
Philippe/ says Guizot, 'had for the Duke de 
Broglie more of esteem and confidence than 
of liking/ But the Duke, proof alike against 
blandishments and obstructions, calmly pur- 
sued his way, and developed his own ideas of 
foreign policy. He cemented the alliance with 
England, and joined in further measures for the 
suppression of the slave trade ; he held his head 
high against the disdain and secret hostility of 
the northern courts ; curbed the haughty Czar, 
and compelled him to pay at least outward 
courtesy to the government of the citizen-king ; 
actively assisted in effecting the independence 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 319 

of Belgium and of Greece ; favoured the estab- 
lishment of constitutionalism in Spain ; gave 
the last blow to the detestable Holy Alliance ; 
and smoothed down certain dangerous asperities 
between France and the United States. But 
he was becoming daily more disgusted with the 
embroilment of public affairs. Louis Philippe 
sought for tools, not independent ministers ; 
scrupled at no corruption, and would readily 
violate any constitutional duty to accomplish his 
personal desires. The revolutionary factions, 
tired out for a while, but not appeased, were 
again raising their crested heads, and found only 
too much matter to inflame the passions of the 
populace in the petty tyrannies and dishonesties 
of the old royal intriguer. The just, stern, and 
spotless soul of De Broglie was equally sick of 
the corruption and the faction ; and nothing but 
a sense of duty to his country retained him in 
the bondage of public life: an accident, if it 
appeared to him sufficient, might any day cut 
the tie. A strong stern word spoken by him 
one day in the Chamber, gave him the deliver- 
ance for which he had long sighed. A member 
had brought forward a proposition on some 



320 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

very incidental matter. De Broglie, as pre- 
sident of the Council, was stating the objec- 
tions of the Government, when some of the 
members, long impatient of his unbending 
manner, interrupted him with cries that his 
statement was not clear. He paused a mo- 
ment, then resumed, and repeated his state- 
ments, and turning round upon his interrupters, 
demanded, in a self-possessed but severe tone, 
'Is that clear?' The clamours were only 
aggravated ; the members affected to feel 
themselves insulted; many votes were lost to 
the Government ; and the issue was, that De 
Broglie gladly tendered a resignation which 
Louis Philippe as gladly accepted. This was in 
1835. He retired from what to him were only 
the cares and burdens of office, never to return. 
But he statedly attended his place as a peer of 
France, and did everything to confirm the 
authority of Louis Philippe, and lent his gene- 
ral support and influence to the policy of his 
friend Guizot. He was the high patrician head 
of the French Liberals — what our own Earl 
Grey and Marquis of Lansdowne used to be to 
the Whigs. The Duchess, whilst sustaining the 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 321 

honour, hospitality, and splendour of the house, 
was evincing a more marked and earnest atten- 
tion to religion. Her reunions were as brilliant, 
her manners as fascinating, her character held 
in as high estimation as ever ; but society 
whispered that she was a Methodist She 
kept up religious worship, and a quiet, unpre- 
tending religious aspect in her family ; she 
wrote and published many simple, excellent, 
elegantly composed little essays on morals and 
religion, and translated several religious works 
from the English and other languages. One of 
her friends had translated Chalmers's sermons 
at St John's ; so that, long before he was known 
to them in the flesh, he was known to them in 
the spirit of Christian fellowship. It was at this 
time (1838), when the Duke was at full leisure, 
that Chalmers was their guest. Alas ! within a 
few months of his visit, the Duchess fell a prey 
to some sudden malady — a loss to her husband 
and family irreparable, and casting the shade of 
a wide sorrow amongst the thousands who had 
known and admired and loved her. In 1848 he 
saw the so-called constitutional monarchy over- 
thrown. He was grieved for his country, be- 



322 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



cause he always distrusted revolutions, but he 
felt that Louis Philippe had brought his fate 
upon himself; and he shortly afterwards offered 
his services to compose the people, who were in 
the throes of a new and tumultuous agitation, 
and to Secure some rational and settled form 
of government When Louis Napoleon was 
raised to be President of the Republic, he fore- 
saw that both republican and all constitutional 
government was doomed. He joined the small 
but heroic band of Liberals, who mustered in 
active resistance to the coup <Tttat of 185 1. 
They were put under arrest by armed force, 
and might well look forward to the worst fate ; 
but as violence, bloodshed, and terror had al- 
ready imposed that silence which tyrants call 
peace, it was not deemed necessary to kill any 
more, and the illustrious prisoners were released. 
The Duke, foreseeing that such a rule could only 
be continued by force, that thought and dis- 
cussion must in the meantime be blotted out, 
and having no faith in that generation. of £is 
countrymen, retired into the absolute seclusion 
in which he has ever since remained. Let us 
read the inscription which an eloquent com- 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 323 

^^^ —■—■■»■■ ■■■■ — — — ■ —^^— ^»^» 

patriot (Leonce de Lavergne) has written over 
his peaceful hermitage : — 

'Modest and proud, he has never sought 
honours, he has never disdained them, he has 
never thought about them at all ; and what is 
rarer still, he has no more courted popularity 
and renown than power. In the grand epoch 
of the republic of Holland, he would have been 
a De Witt or a Barneveldt; in England he 
would have been the venerated head of the 
great Whig party. . . . More still than his acts, 
there will remain of him, that which remains of 
the Russells and the Hampdens whose memory 
he so often invoked — the remembrance and 
example of a great citizen ! ' 

Such, then, was the family that paid the 
highest attention to Chalmers when he was 
on his visit to France. It is gratifying indeed 
to his admirers to find that French society 
offered him its homage through its most august 
representative of nobility, intellect, virtue, and 
piety. The Duke was amongst the first who 
waited upon Chalmers after his arrival at Paris 
— ' kind, but retired/ remarks Chalmers ; but 
the retirement, natural to the Duke, wore off on 



324 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

further intercourse, and they had the most 
cordial and interesting converse. The Duchess 
and family were down on the estate in Nor- 
mandy, and there Chalmers was invited. 

His abode at the chateau of Broglie reads like 
a chapter in some domestic idyll. The Duchess 
was most affable and attentive to him ; so also 
her sister-in-law, Madame de StaeL 'Drew 
much to Madame de Stael/ he mentions in his 
Journal; 'delicate, pensive, highly interesting.' 
When his visit came to an end, 'They took 
leave of me/ he records, 'with much kindness, 
and, I have even the fondness to think, with 
some feeling. I myself felt much ; and I pray 
for God's best blessing on the heads of all whom 
I met in that abode of elegant and lettered hospi- 
tality.' The Duchess, as we have already noted, 
died a few months afterwards ; and in a letter of 
condolence to her husband, Chalmers writes : — 

'Her kindness during the few days I lived 
under your hospitable roof will never, never be 
effaced from my grateful recollection. Her con- 
versation, and, above all, her prayers poured 
forth in the domestic circle, and which, at the 
time of their utterance, fell upon my ears like 



SEASONS OF RECREA TION. 325 

the music of paradise, have left a fragrance be- 
hind them, and the memory of them is sweet.' 

From the chateau of Broglie to the Bullers of 
Buchan is a rough leap ; but it can be taken — 
on paper. In the autumn, then, of 1839 he is in 
the far north of Scotland, collecting money for 
his territorial extension, and always, at the same 
time, visiting all the principal families, and sur- 
veying all the notable places. Somewhere near 
Cromarty he is disgusted with the silly, insipid 
religious talk of the party, and marks his dis- 
gust very unceremoniously. * A rather large 
and fatiguing party; and some of them had 
the tone and manner of commonplace religious 
society. One lady asked me " if I was proud, 
or if I was humble" — in the idea, I have no 
doubt, that the admiration of her, and such as 
she, must prove a sore trial to my vanity. My 
reply was, that I was somewhat short in the 
temper, under the fatigues and annoyances to 
which I was occasionally exposed in my public 
labours/ Poor, commonplace pious lady ! how 
she must have been shocked to find she had 
caught a bear like Dr. Johnson, in one with 
whom she expected to have such sweet converse 



326 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

for the evening. After much adventurousness, 
we come to the dreadful sea-caldron of the said 
Bullers of Buchan — fierce sea-monster, that can 
seldom be approached, but ofttimes sucks into 
her bosom the passing skiff or schooner, and 
instantly dashes it to pieces. 'Fell in with 
fishermen/ he records, 'who said that it was 
quite a day for the boat My heart leaped for joy 
at the achievement of getting inside of the Butler, 
— so rare, that even Mr. Philip, the parish mini- 
ster, had never been there, and Mr. Robertson, 
of the neighbouring parish, only once. So we 
scudded down the brae, launched the boat, 
manned it with four hands, and committed 
ourselves to the waves, which were moderate 
enough to admit of the enterprise, for it is only 
safe in calm weather. . . . Turned south to the 
Buller, where we were presented with a lofty 
arch, having a fine massive bending alcove, and 
leading to a hollow cylinder, with the sky over- 
head, and a lofty wall of precipice all round. 
The waves rose higher in the archway, which 
is narrow, insomuch that our gallant crew had 
to ply their boat-hooks on both sides to keep 
us off the rocks ; but got at length into the 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 327 

bottom of the churn, which churns nobly in a 
storm, and causes a manufacture of yeast, that 
flies in light frothy balls up to the top of the 
caldron, and is carried off through the country. 
It was calm enough, however, now to admit of 
our leisurely contemplation of the magnificent 
alcove into which we had gotten ; and after 
glorying in our exploit for some minutes, we 
rowed and boat-hooked our way back again. 
. . . On ascending the brae, went to the top of 
the Buller, and looked down to the place 9 (200 
feet below, say the guide-books) 'where we had 
been rolling half an hour before. With the ex- 
ception of its land side, there is a narrow rim 
all round it, broadest at the place which sur- 
mounts the archway, but contracting into three 
or four feet at other places, and wearing away 
at one part into the most ticklish step of 
all. This rim is perpendicular on both sides, 
yet so often circumambulated, even by ladies, 
as to be trodden into a foot-path. I had the 
greatest desire to finish my conquest of the 
Buller by following in the footsteps of these 
heroines, but thought of prosaic mamma, and 
made a virtue of moderation. Mr. Robertson 



328 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

says that if I had offered to do it, he would 
have laid violent hands upon me. It is, in truth, 
very seldom done ; though the last Duke of 
Gordon but one, after having dined at Slaines 
Castle, is said to have rode round it on horse- 
back — a truly after-dinner achievement ! ' 

Who can doubt, but for thinking of ' prosaic 
mamma/ and the urgent dissuasions of his com- 
panions, that Thomas Chalmers, aged sixty, 
would have walked round that dangerous ledge, 
200 feet above those roaring Bullers, with all 
the daring of his Anster boyhood ? His very 
first expression, ' My heart leaped for joy at the 
achievement of getting inside of the Buller,' 
reads like the beginning of a Norse ballad. On 
the other hand, it reminds us also of the mood 
of feeling so tenderly expressed by Words- 
worth, but under a softer association than that 
of the Bullers of Buchan — even on the sudden 
apparition of a rainbow : — 

' My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky : 
So was it when my life began ; 
So is it now I am a man ; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 

Or let me die ! 



SEASONS OF RECREATION. 329 

The child is father of the man ; 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety/ 

Truly with Chalmers also, the child was father 
of the man. There was difference of shading, 
but no break in the continuity of the line ; and 
his days were bound each to each by the golden 
ties of truth, simplicity, and loving-kindness, 
crowned at last with a full realizing faith and 
an ever-progressive spirituality. 

For five or six years, the most tempestuous, 
perhaps the only tempestuous years of his life, 
when his once beloved Church was broken in 
twain, and, with grieved yet undaunted heart, he 
had to organize a new one, amid obloquy and 
desertion, — for these five or six years he seldom 
left the scene of action, but toiled away with 
more than the unflagging energy of manhood. 
He was always in action, always buoyant, and 
always, like the knights of old, loved to work 
alongside a true man. ' I have no feeling of 
age/ said he one day to a valued and most 
gifted fellow-worker, who had been assisting 
him in a long day's spell at arithmetical calcu- 
lations, — ' I have no feeling of age ; my mind is 



330 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

as firm, my memory as perfect as ever. There's 
only one sign of age/ he added with a laugh ; 
' I canna bear to be contradicted.' Then, sur- 
veying with triumph the long bristling array of 
figures which they had calculated and checked 
together, ' O man/ he exclaimed eagerly, ' what 
a quantity of work I could have gone through 
if I had always had you at my side ! Sir, I have 
been taigled (entangled) with a set of speaking 
machines all my life.' 

Anon, however, having pioneered the way 
through all the early difficulties, he shook him* 
self free about the end of 1844, when he was 
sixty-four years of age, from these exhausting 
complications; and again he used his new- 
recovered liberty in boyish rambles to many of 
his old remembered scenes. 





XXIII. 



THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN. 




>N the years 1845 and 1846, he was 
seized with a prophetic yearning to 
visit various places associated with 
his most tender recollections. In spring 1845 
he wended his way to the old home of Anster, 
examined it carefully, and brought away shells 
from the beach, and a bunch of lilac from his 
father's garden, all which he laid up amongst 
his relics. He dropt into a cottage to see where 
Lizzie Geen's water-bucket stood, from which he 
used to drink when a schoolboy. He sought 
out his old acquaintances amongst the people, 
and talked with sympathetic glee over their 
youthful feats and their youthful notions. 
'James/ said he to an old man above eighty, 
'you were the first man that ever gave me 
something like a correct notion of the form of 

831 



332 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the earth. I knew that it was round, but I 
thought always that it was round like a shilling, 
till you told me that it was round like a 
marble.' ' Well, John/ said he to another, whose 
face, like his own, had suffered severely from 
smallpox in his childhood, 'you and I have had 
one advantage over folk with finer faces ; theirs 
have been aye getting the waur, but ours have 
been aye getting the better o' the wear.' He 
took pleasure in this homely kind of joking 
about his face. An old woman, who had known 
him when a youth, took out her spectacles, and 
after surveying him closely — 'Eh but, doctor/ 
she exclaimed, ' ye're lookin' weel/ ' Ay, 
Jenny/ he answered laughing, 'do you know 
I think I'm going to be a good-looking old 
man ; ye ken, when young, I was very coarse- 
featured.' Curiously enough, about this very 
time, Professor Tholuck of Halle being in Edin- 
burgh, they had a great deal of intercourse in 
a mutual friend's house, and on one of these 
occasions, Tholuck turned round to his friend 
with a look of admiration, saying in German 
(which Chalmers did not understand), 'I have 
never seen so beautiful an old man ! ' Chalmers, 



THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN. 333 

thinking it was a remark in the conversation, 
asked eagerly, ' What is it, sir, that he says ? ' — 
a question that had, in some way, to be quietly 
evaded. I can bear testimony (having seen him 
often during his two last years) to this nameless 
loveliness — not beauty in the artistic sense, for 
of that he had little — but a loveliness as of 
heaven, like that of Raphael, 'the sociable 
spirit ' — the last finished outward expression of 
a life of noble thought and beneficent action. 

But there were also incidents in his youthful 
haunts that moved him to tears. One such his 
Biographer relates, unfolding a singular story and 
a singular trait in his character — the deep trea- 
suring-up of an attachment of boyhood ; fit theme 
for song, yet too fine and sacred to be invaded by 
even the delicate hand of the poet. The little 
tale is told so exquisitely in the biography, that 
to attempt any other words would be profanation. 

'The most interesting visit of all was to 
Barnsmuir, a place a few miles from Anstruther, 
on the way to Crail. In his schoolboy days it 

had been occupied by Captain R , whose 

eldest daughter rode in daily on a little pony to 
the school at Anstruther. Dr. Chalmers was 



334 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

then a boy of from twelve to fourteen years of 
age ; but he was not too young for an attach- 
ment of a singularly tenacious hold. Miss 

R was married (I believe while he was yet 

at college) to Mr. F ; and his opportunities 

of seeing her in after life were few ; but that 
early impression never faded from his heart 
At the time of this visit to Anstruther, in 1845, 
she had been dead for many years ; but at Dr. 
Chalmers' particular request, her younger sister 
met him at Barnsmuir. Having made the most 

affectionate inquiries about Mrs. F , and her 

family, he inquired particularly about her death, 
receiving with deep emotion the intelligence 
that she had died in the full Christian hope, 
and that some of his own letters to her sister 
had served to soothe and comfort her latest 

hours. ** Mrs. W /' said he eagerly, " is there 

a portrait of your sister anywhere in this house?" 
She took him to a room and pointed to a profile 
which hung uptin the wall He planted himself 
before it ; gazed on it with intense earnestness ; 
took down the picture, took out his card, and, 
by two wafers, fixed it firmly on the back of the 
portrait, exactly opposite to the face. Having 



THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN. 335 

replaced the likeness, he stood before it and 
burst into a flood of tears, accompanied by 
the warmest expressions of attachment After 
leaving the house he sauntered in silence round 
the garden, buried in old recollections, heaving 
a sigh occasionally, and muttering to him- 
self, " More than forty years ago ! " ' In gazing 
on the long-lost vision and ideal of his youth, he 
felt as Dante did with his Beatrice : 

' And she, so distant as appeared, looked down 
And smiled, then towards the Eternal 
Fountain turned.' 

In the spring of 1846, he visited, for the first 
time, Yarrow and St. Mary's Loch. He felt the 
charm of these sweet hills of mingled grass and 
heather. 'I like these quiet hills, these sober 
uplands. Hills, all bare like these, are what I 
call the statuary of landscape.' In the evening 
he called his daughters into his own room, and 
read over to them with great animation the 
trilogy of Wordsworth on Yarrow^ repeating 

with peculiar rapture these lines : 

' Meek lowliness is round thee spread, 

A softness still and holy ; 
The grace of forest charms decayed, 
And pastoral melancholy.' 



336 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

But his thoughts were running still farther 
south, even to the banks of the Teviot and the 
wooded slopes of Cavers, where he first entered 
upon his ministry at the beginning of the 
century, though then all unthinking of its 
solemnity and importance. The youngsters 
of the party one day climbed an Ettrick hill ; 
no longer able for such an arduous task, he 
awaited them below. His eager question when 
they descended was, 'Did you see Cavers f 
Later in the season he satisfied his wish by an 
excursion to Cavers, and to Hawick and Jed- 
burgh, seeking out as usual every well-known 
scene and every long-remembered face. His 
last journey of 1846 was to his old field of 
victory, Glasgow, and down the Clyde, and 
round the shores of Loch Lomond. I do not 
know whether it was at this visit, but it is 
related, that when a gentleman took him to 
a point where there was a glorious view of Loch 
Lomond, Chalmers gazed for a long time as if 
transfixed, then turned round, his countenance 
beaming with emotion, 'Depend upon it, sir, 
there are lakes in heaven ! ' 



cw^M*B&$o 



XXIV. 



HORjE sabbaticje. 




iUT in his later years more especially, 
he was not growing merely in sim- 
plicity and sweetness and joyfulness 
of nature ; he was strenuously but humbly 
climbing up the heights, to attain the perfection 
of the Christian life. His pious walk and con- 
versation were seen and known of all men, — his 
evident earnest desire to fulfil the two command- 
ments — of love to God and love to man. But 
not until his death, when his private journals 
and meditations were discovered, and his Bio- 
grapher, with a wise discretion, made them 
known, were even his most intimate friends 
aware how, amidst his multifarious engagements, 
he had kept up such a constant watch over his 
heart and life, and such a close communion with 
his God. 

Y 



338 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

In that three years' transformation which he 
passed through, from 1809 to 18 12, he described 
many stages of inward experience. Intensely 
practical as he always was, his instinct, on 
seeking to enter upon the Christian life, was 
to press for universal holiness, which is the 
true end of the Christian religion. In his first 
excitement he thought this was to be attained 
by conscientious, reflective, ever-careful obedi- 
ence — by keeping a check upon his inmost 
thoughts, a bridle upon his lips — a lash, as it 
were, suspended over his head, to regulate his 
every step and movement He thought that 
holiness was a growth of nature, nourished by 
the study of Scripture, and fanned in some way 
by the wings of the Divine Spirit He set him- 
self to the work, therefore, as a matter of busi- 
ness and human diligence ; tried, through the 
day, to direct his steps aright, and at night, with 
his journal before him, sat as censor over his 
daily conduct He condemned most of it, ap- 
proved some of it, resolved to do better ; but 
he was more and more weighed down by a sense 
of deficiency and of some inherent inability. In 
a year's time he was driven well-nigh to despair. 



HORJE SABBA TICAS. 339 

This cannot be the way of attaining holiness. 
He seems getting farther and farther away from 
the summit ; the requirements of obedience are 
always mounting higher, his own performances 
sinking lower ; the light shines purer and purer, 
and in this light his own hands look always 
the fouler. Besides, he is oppressed by a burden 
of infelt guiltiness. How is this to be removed ? 
how is this to be blotted out from the sight of 
a just and righteous God ? He searches the 
Scriptures more attentively ; he consults the 
testimonies and experiences of those who have 
gone before him in the path of Christianity. He 
now discerns the evil of sin in a new light It 
is not a natural infirmity merely, as he used to 
suppose ; it is not to be laughed off with a pro- 
verb — humanum est errare; it is not a thing to 
be got rid of by ordinary care and resolution. 
It bulks before him as an impassable barrier ; it 
shuts him out from the countenance of God ; it 
has been the thing, all this time, that has stopped 
him in his course, and dragged him down in his 
efforts after holiness. He pauses, reconsiders 
his situation, looks all around him for means 
of egress and progress. Under the guidance of 



34© THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Scripture, he is brought to the Saviour, who 
says unto him, ' I am the way! After doubts 
and fears and hesitations, he believes this word ; 
he ventures his salvation upon this assurance; 
he enters through this way with implicit faith ; 
and, lo, the barrier that impeded him now 
disappears, and the light of God's countenance 
shines down from the firmament He has a new 
experience : not only is the barrier to his passage 
swept out of the way, but he feels as if he were 
raised on angelic wings, borne up by supernal 
powers — as if he were .making a real and pro- 
gressive approach to those heights of holiness 
formerly unattainable; not by a growth of nature, 
but altogether by a gift of divine grace. In 
other words, he now experiences that holiness 
is to be attained, not by the efforts of natural 
strength, but as part of a gracious gift from 
Christ the Saviour : first, pardon of guilt ; next, 
progressive holiness of life. From the date of 
this blessed experience, he renews his former 
pursuit ; he pushes on to the same goal as be- 
fore, that is, to holiness, growing more and 
more up to perfection. But he now seeks it, 
not as the prize of natural virtue, but as a 



HORjE SABBA TICjE. 341 

faculty implanted and fostered solely by divine 
grace. 

I am not composing a chapter for a theolo- 
gical treatise ; I am only tracing, in a few feeble 
words, the warm, living experiences which Chal- 
mers passed through, and of which he has left 
a record in his Journals, and especially in his 
Hor<e SabbaticcBy being his meditations and 
prayers in his reading of the Scriptures on Sun- 
days, from 1 841 to the eve of his death in 1847. 

This, then, was the distinguishing characteristic 
of Chalmers, and made him a marked man in 
more senses than one, — this restless yearning 
anxiety about the attainment of holy living; 
this jealousy over his actions ; this self-torture 
in finding himself, whilst still upon earth, so 
deficient of the perfections of heaven. Thus he 
meditates aiid prays : — ' May I now regard my- 
self as sanctified and set apart unto God as one 
of His peculiar people, who has come out from 
a world which lieth in wickedness. . . . The two 
must go together — the unwavering faith which 
rests on God's promise, and the purification by 
which, in person and character, we are made 
holy and fruitful in good works. Here follows 



342 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the efflorescence of that practical Christianity 
which emerges from its well-laid principle. . . . 
O Lord, may I well understand that Thine is a 
holy salvation. . . . Mark how faith is identified 
with obedience — elements which the contro- 
versies of the Church have arranged in hostile 
conflict, and placed so widely apart from each 
other.' It was this treating of faith as only in- 
strumentary, and this panting after holiness as 
the true goal of the Christian, which made him 
suspected amongst some of the ultra-orthodox 
theologians, of whom he so frequently complains 
in his Hora Sabbatiaz ; who sit in polemic state, 
surrounded by their little scales and weights, 
and determine, to the nicety of a grain, who is 
sound in his creed, and who is not These 
weighing-machine theologians never liked Chal- 
mers ; and it is plain, from the hints in the Horn 
Sabbaticcz, and from what I have heard other- 
wise, that, in the very last years of his life, some 
of these pismires stung him, and even attempted 
to raise against him the cry of heresy. ' There 
is an alienation of affection/ he writes under the 
date of April 1 846, ' that takes place when there 
arises the suspicion or imagination of an error, 



HOR& SABBATICJE. 343 

and more particularly when it amounts to the 
conception of a heresy. I believe that at this 
moment I labour under a suspicion of this sort ; 
and I feel a consequent distrust, and ev6n dis- 
like of me, as the effect of it May God give 
me to walk aright under this visitation ; to walk 
in the truth, even when accused for dereliction 
of, or hostility to the truth. ... I have adver- 
saries, and I pray for charity towards them. In 
as far as I am right and they are wrong, give 
them to see, and, if Thou thinkest meet, to ac- 
knowledge their error. I will not pray for their 
humiliation, but for their amendment Bring 
forth my judgment unto light, and my righteous- 
ness as the noonday. Save me from the trials 
that are too heavy for me, and give me to over- 
come. Prepare me for the land of blessedness 
and everlasting peace, where enemies cease from 
troubling, and the weary are at rest* 

As he reads the Scriptures, and lays bare his 
heart, and brings it up before the mirror of the 
divine word, he trembles at the spectacle of his 
secret iniquities, of his declensions from what is 
good, of his proneness to evil, of the selfish- 

* 

ness and impurity that mingle in his best ser- 



344 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

vices. He utters strong groans and cries ; he 
throws himself on the mercy of God with the 
most affecting supplications. It is ever thus 
when the anxious soul turns upon itself the 
microscope of the divine law : every weak place 
is discerned, every spot and deformity is magni- 
fied ; unknown seeds of disease are detected, 
and even that which to the outward eye seemed 
healthy and beautiful, takes a strange and un- 
wholesome hue. Did not Paul, under this 
searching self-examination, cry out, 'I see an- 
other law in my members warring against the 
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity 
to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death ? ' And did not 
Augustine also cry, ' Woe is me, Lord ! have 
pity on me! woe is me! Lo, I hide not my 
wounds ! Thou art the Physician, I the sick ; 
Thou merciful, I miserable ! . . . Verily Thou 
enjoinest me continency from the lust of the 
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of 
the world. . . . Art Thou not mighty, God Al- 
mighty, so as to heal all the diseases of my soul ? 
. . . Thou wilt increase, Lord, Thy gifts more 



HORjE SABBATIC^. 345 

and more in me, that my soul may follow me 
to Thee, disentangled from the bird-lime of con- 
cupiscence. . . . Affrighted with my sins, and 
the burthen of my misery, I had cast in my 
heart, and had purposed to flee to the wilderness ; 
but Thou forbadest me, and strengthenedst 
me, saying, " Therefore Christ died for all, that 
they which live may now no longer live unto 
themselves, but unto Him that died for them." ' 
Need we wonder, therefore, that Chalmers, so 
like-minded, so delicately sensitive to all sin, 
sank down in shame and self-abhorrence as he 
looked down into himself with the same fiery 
scrutiny ? ' Save me, save me, O God, from the 
licentious, and — what I pre-eminently stand in 
need of — from the wrathful affections of this 
carnal and accursed nature. . . . Give me to 
ponder well those decisive sentences, that if I 
do the works of the flesh, I shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God ; and that if I am Christ's, I 
have crucified the flesh, with its affections and 
lusts. . . . May I be enabled to renounce the 
devil, the world, and the flesh. Thou knowest 
my frame ; Thou knowest my peculiar neces- 
sities ; Thou knowest, more especially, my lack 



346 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

of wisdom. I pray for guidance and support, 
that I may be enabled to conquer this great 
temptation. . . . Humble me, O God, under the 
sense of my former most disgraceful relapses. 
Keep me, God, within the bond of Thy cove- 
nant The sins and iniquities of my past life — 
and these, too, in the face of solemn and repeated 
sacramental engagements — do Thou remember 
no more.' He droops and languishes, too, in the 
void of a certain personal isolation. Although 
the centre of such a wide, and, in many instances, 
such an affectionate and devoted circle of friends, 
he pines for some higher form of fellowship 
than earth can afford. ' I am conversant more 
with principles than with persons. I begin to 
suspect that the intensity of my own pursuits 
has isolated me from living men ; and that there 
is a want of that amalgamation about me, which 
cements the companionships and closer brother- 
hoods that obtain in society. ... I would not 
live alway. What a wilderness the world is to 
the heart, with all it has to inspire happiness ! 
I have a great and growing sense of desolation. 
What a marvellous solitude every man bears 
about with him ! ' Sometimes he falls into 



HORAZ SABBATIC JZ. 347 



the most heartrending agonies of felt inward 
weakness and remorse. ' Lord Jesus Christ ! 
Thou art as willing as Thou art able ; Thou 
wilt, as well as canst, make me clean. Oh, 
compassionate me, and heal the foul diseases 
of this tainted spirit, and give me to be holy 
even as Thyself art holy! . . . Thou knowest, 
O God, what a weak — nay, what a wicked — 
nay, what a detestable creature I am ! I call 
out " Unclean, unclean ! " Heal my back- 
slidings ; deliver me from the power of my 
inborn and yet obstinate corruptions ; let me 
be temperate in all things ; let not sin have 
the dominion over me. I pray to be rescued 
both from present disgrace and from future 
damnation, for I am exceeding vile, O God, 
and cry for Thy mercy on me, a miserable 
offender. . . . O God, be with me ! O Christ, 
help me V These were the agonies of his 
spirit, as he felt the remaining touches of moral 
defilement within him ; his agonies and weep- 
ings and longings to be stripped of all that 
is evil, and clothed upon with the good and 
the pure. His conscience was now so tender, 
that the least evil thought wounded him. His 



348 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

soul was now so bathing in the pure water of 
life, that the least spot of human corruption 
looked huge and monstrous and unclean. The 
nearer he approached the goal, the more fearful 
was he of making any slip or stumble. But 
he often becomes more tranquil, especially as 
he draws near to the close of his life, as if 
unconsciously he were becoming meet for 
his departure ; and his heart will go forth in 
kindling aspirations after that moral perfection, 
that consummated holiness, which had been the 
aim of his whole regenerated existence — the 
human to be at last drawn up to the divine. 
' Oh for the experience of such an outpouring 
of God's Spirit upon my heart, as that hence- 
forth I shall call Him Abba, Father ! Let me 
wait and watch for this. Let me resolutely aim 
at this ... till the day dawn, and the day-star 
arise within me. . • • Guide me, O Lord, in all 
my researches after the good and the true. . . . 
Make me perfect, O God Turn me to Thy- 
self. . . . Come quickly, Lord Jesus! ... In 
the attitude of habitual service and of habitual 
application, would I wait for Thy coming to 
our world.' 



XXV. 



THE LAST TROPHY. 




E now (that is, about the year 1845) 
turned from the administration and 
finance of the Free Church to the 
object of his lifelong devotion — the comple- 
tion of another model of his idea of Territorial 
superintendence — the building of another City 
of God. His former experiments were made 
whilst the Established Church was still entire ; 
whilst he still had, at least in outward show, 
the countenance of the Government and the 
landocracy. But now the Church was dis- 
rupted, the Government over his head was 
brass, and the landocracy, who monopolized 
the soil, were iron; every official and aristo- 
cratic impediment was piled up against him. 
He had no instrument to work with but only 

849 



350 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the Free Church, and concert with the Seceding 
denominations; and he never concealed, — he 
avowed as distinctly now, when he was under 
the ban of the State, as when he was at the 
head of an Establishment, — that he only trusted 
to Voluntaryism as a supplement, liberal but 
intermittent, and apt to be dried up ; and that 
State endowment, even partial, was necessary 
as a base from which to extend universally, 
in the large cities and in the remote districts, 
the full machinery either of religion or educa- 
tion. He was anxious to test the resources 
of his new position ; to see whether organiza- 
tion, and a good understanding amongst the 
evangelical denominations might not, to a large 
extent, be a substitute for State endowment ; 
whether they might not agree to chalk out 
certain territories of ministration ; and thus 
spread out and out, until the whole country was 
but one city of the mighty King. 

He chose as the scene of his operations a 
well-defined district — that long narrow street, 
the West Port of Edinburgh, with its adjoining 
wynds or alleys, at the bottom of which was 
anciently situated the western gate into the 



THE LAST TROPHY. 351 

city by the Grassmarket. There a most hetero- 
geneous, a most abject, depraved, and miser- 
able population were huddled together. The 
Tophet of Edinburgh ! the scene, but a few 
years before, of the Burke and Hare murders, 
with all their diabolical orgies and atrocities! 
This West Port district lay in his way, as he 
walked- from his residence in Morningside to 
the Free Church College, then in George Street ; 
and no doubt in these walks the Moral Engineer 
had been marking out this neglected suburb, as 
he previously did the Water of Leith, for the 
site whereon he was to plant an encampment, 
in his never-ceasing war against pauperism and 
ignorance and vice, and all personal and social 
misery. His mind was fairly directed to it in 
the beginning of 1844, when he writes to a cor- 
respondent : — ' I have determined to assume a 
poor district of 2000 people, and superintend it 
myself, though it be a work greatly too much 
for my declining strength and means. . . . The 
most which I can personally undertake to do, is 
to work off one model or normal specimen of 
the process by which a single locality might be 
reclaimed from this vast and desolate wilder- 



352 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

ness ; and after the confirmation of my views 
by a made-out experience of this sort, pressing 
it on the imitation of all other philanthropists 
of all other localities.' 

If in the lowest deep of city heathenism 
there may still be a lower deep, the West 
Fort had sunk to the bottom of that abyss. 
Amongst the many deplorable evidences given 
by the excellent and self-denying missionary, 
now minister, Mr. Tasker, we may take two, 
merely as specimens of the seemingly hopeless 
brutality of the people. 'Upon one occasion 
he entered a tenement with from twelve to 
twenty apartments, where every human being, 
man and woman, were so drunk they could 
not hear their own squalid infants crying in 
vain to them for food. He purchased some 
bread for the children; and entering a few 
minutes afterwards a neighbouring dram-shop, 
he found a half-drunk mother driving a bargain 
for more whisky with the very bread which 
her famishing children should have been eating. 
He went once to a funeral, and found the as- 
sembled company all so drunk around the 
corpse, that he had to go and beg some sober 



THE LAST TROPHY. 353 

neighbours to come and carry the coffin to the 
grave/ 

But Chalmers had now gathered round him, 
as he always and easily did, a firm band of 
agents, both male and female. The West 
Port was divided into twenty proportions {pro- 
portions — his old Glasgow word !) each contain- 
ing, as nearly as might be, twenty families, 
and 100 individuals. Over each of these pro- 
portions a visitor was appointed, to form 
acquaintance and hold intercourse with the 
inhabitants, and attract them to respond to 
the object The agents had regular weekly 
meetings, where they compared their experi- 
ences, and discussed and resolved upon their 
plans. Chalmers punctually attended these 
meetings, except when he was unwell ; and 
this, alas ! was frequently happening in this 
autumn and winter of 1844-5. At first they 
met in Portsburgh Hall, an old court-house of 
the district ; but their headquarters were soon 
transferred to a singular apartment In the 
low and filthy lane where the Burke murders 
were perpetrated, and nearly opposite their 
den, was an old deserted tannery, with an 



354 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

upper loft reached by an outside stair, very 
rough and creaky. The interior was bare and 
dilapidated; the walls coarse and unplastered, 
pierced here and there with little, dingy, un- 
sightly windows ; the roof low and scantily 
slated, scarcely affording decent shelter ; the 
floor decayed, uneven, and shaking at every 
tread. 

A school was opened on the nth of No- 
vember 1844, under a most efficient teacher, 
Mr. Sinclair. Chalmers, with his usual buoy- 
ancy, and his tenacious adherence to the terri- 
torial idea, wrote to him in October: — 'I 
should particularly like that your preference 
should be for West Port boys, rather than 
for those who might be afterwards brought in 
from beyond the locality. Be assured that 
you will meet with a full average of talent 
among the ragged children of this outlandish 
population. Our great object, in fact, is to 
reclaim them from their present outlandishness, 
and raise them to a higher platform.' The 
school opened with sixty-four day and fifty- 
seven evening scholars ; and in a single year 
no fewer than 250 were in attendance, chiefly 



THE LAST TROPHY. 355 

from the West Port. In December, public 
worship was commenced in the same tan-loft, 
— at first with about a dozen poor old women ; 
but the attendance gradually and steadily in- 
creased. It was in the same tan-loft where 
Chalmers, now in the winter of 1844-5, used 
to meet with the agents. 'It is yet but the 
day of small things with us/ he says in his 
Horce Sabbaticce ; 'and I, in all likelihood, 
shall be taken off ere that much greater pro- 
gress is made in the advancement of the blessed 
gospel throughout our land. But give me the 
foretaste and the confident foresight of this 
great Christian and moral triumph ere I die. 
Let me at least, if it be Thy blessed will, 
see — though it should be only in one or in 
a small number of specimens — a people living 
in some district of aliens, as the West Port, 
reclaimed at least into willing and obedient 
hearers— afterwards, in Thine own good time, 
to become the doers, of Thy word. Give me, 
O Lord, a token for the larger accomplish- 
ment of this good ere I die. Go forth con- 
quering and to conquer ; so that the strong- 
holds of the present wide-spread corruption 



356 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

might all be overthrown. Oh that we had 
possession even of one of these strongholds! 
— a presage of the final overthrow of the prince 
of darkness, who now rules and holds the as- 
cendant over so wide a territory, and through- 
out such a length and breadth of our country's 
population. .... And, O Lord ! in my present 
helplessness and imbecility, teach me how to 
direct and encourage others ; and cause many 
to arise who might do both wisely and vali- 
antly in the battles of the faith.' 

It was not easy for a stranger, however 
respectable and sincere in his sympathies, to 
obtain access into the ' charmed circle' of these 
reunions of the agents, or to the public services. 
With the agents the meetings were private, 
and for business ; they had often delicate per- 
sonal questions of the neighbourhood to dis- 
cuss, and naturally disliked to be hampered 
by the presence of strangers. Chalmers, again, 
had always — in Glasgow and elsewhere — been 
extremely jealous of the incursion of persons 
outside his territory, either into agency meet- 
ings, or even more into the schools and place 
of worship. 'The West Port for the West 



THE LAST TROPHY. 357 

Porters !' was his motto. By a little connivance 
I was present at one of the meetings, and fre- 
quently mingled in the Sabbath services. I had 
a friend at court in one of the agents, who used 
to pass me through the custom-house. 

It was a dark, raw, dripping night of that 
same winter, I threaded my way to the mouth 
of Burke's Close, down the black Avernus, up 
the creaking stair into the tan-loft, where there 
were a few rugged benches, and a small rickety 
table, with one or two candles upon it ; but 
the atmosphere was dull and dim. Ten or a 
dozen agents were grouped around the table, 
some of them labouring men and artisans, some 
of them small tradesmen of the place, all staid, 
thoughtful, serious-looking men. The chair of 
state was vacant — a plain deal chair, without 
arms or ornaments of any kind. It was a little 
before the time of meeting ; they were talking 
in a low earnest tone, but evidently waiting for 
the word of command. By and by, just at the 
stroke of the hour, we heard a husky but hearty 
voice outside — a sharp short military tramp on 
the stair — ' Take care, Doctor ! there's the step, 
Doctor !' Some within hastened and opened the 



358 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

door, and abruptly, but kindly, in marched the 
old man, — the Moral Engineer, — with a wave of 
the hand to all, and a radiant smile on his 
countenance. After interchanging salutations, 
down he sat in the chair of consultation. 

I cannot now recall the particulars of the 
conference ; it was all simple, ordinary business 
of the little territory ; but I remember in out- 
line the charming scene. He was so bland, so 
animated, so cordial with all; sought so humbly 
and eagerly to hear every one's opinion ; threw 
the whole force of his intellect into every little 
point of the discussion, as if it were the settling 
of a campaign, or the saving of an empire ; yet 
he was so open, so candid with the suggestions 
of others, so heart and soul their brother. 'Yes, 
John, that will be better ' — ' No doubt, Andrew, 
yours is the right course' — € Well, Robin, I don't 
quite see the thing in your light.' And then, 
on the other hand, how these plain men pene- 
trated the grandeur of his mind, the depth of 
his thoughts, the fruitfulness of his experience ! 
how their eyes sparkled in gladness and reve- 
rence as they looked and listened! Yet they 
were not qverawed by his magnitude — nay, were 



THE LAST TROPHY. 359 

- ■ 

drawn by his light and sweetness. On all sides 
are heard, 'But d'ye no think, Doctor?' — 'Are 
you aware, Doctor ? ' — and the old man listened 
with a child's docility, and pondered and 
weighed everything which the humblest of them 
suggested. Without any dictation, he kept them 
to order, to method, to despatch of business, to 
getting through the work ; and once or twice he 
kindled into those spontaneous flashes of con- 
versation, which one always admired more than 
even his most magnificent written apostrophes. 
In this little scene — the only one where I ever 
saw him actually at work — I felt what a mighty 
radiator of influence he was! how he swept 
every one along in his orbit ! 

I was several times present at the Sabbath 
services, which he now habitually attended, 
sometimes as a preacher, often as a hearer. 
Here, again, one was always affected by his 
personal magnetism. When he was a hearer 
only, one would see him near the pulpit, in a 
crowd of deaf old women, who were meanly 
clothed, but who followed the services with un- 
flagging attention and interest His eye was 
upon every one of them, to anticipate their 



360 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

wishes and difficulties. He would help one old 
woman to find out the text; he would take hold 
of the Psalm-book of another, hand to hand, 
and join her in the song of praise. Any one 
looking at him could see that he was in a 
state of supreme enjoyment ; he could not be 
happier out of heaven. And then, when he 
preached, he gave the ' genuine West Porters/ 
as he called them, the very best of his pro- 
ductions; he preached to them as Bossuet did, at 
the close of his life, amongst the poor people of 
his village; he chose simple evangelical themes; 
but often the eloquence was as lofty as if he 
had been addressing the most select audiences 
in Edinburgh or London. Though in his sixty- 
fifth year, his powers as an orator were little 
enfeebled ; his frame was still unbroken, his arm 
still wielded the thunderbolt; and that living 
sense of reality, which heated all his eloquence, 
Still blazed around him with unabated flame. 

In the true territorial spirit, — desiring in pre- 
ference the attendance of the parishioners, — 
he looked with some jealousy on well-dressed 
strangers coming and occupying the seats of his 
* genuine West Porters.' I always dressed in 



THE LAST TROPHY. 361 

my shabbiest, to avoid detection. But one day 
he announced there was to be a collection next 
Sabbath, in aid of their funds. ' You know/ 
he said, 'in general I am not favourable to 
strangers coming here, and engrossing the seats 
which rightfully belong to the inhabitants of the 
territory; but as next Sabbath is a collection, 
I invite all the well-dressed people to come, 
provided they will give donations corresponding 
to the fineness of their dress/ 

The mission grew under a regular ministry. 
In February 1847 a neat church, fronting the 
main street, was opened. On April 25 th the 
first sacrament was administered to the members, 
at which Chalmers presided and preached ; and 
x>n the Monday he said to Mr. Tasker, ' I have 
got now the desire of my heart : the church is 
finished, the schools are flourishing, our ecclesi- 
astical machinery is about complete, and all in 
good working order. God has indeed heard my 
prayer ; and I could now lay down my head in 
peace, and die.' 

And, thirty-five days thence, he laid down 
his head in peace, and died 1 




XXVL 

HE DIES A T HIS POST. 

E left Scotland for London on the 6th 
of May 1847, — ten days after the 
West Port sacrament, — to give evi- 
dence before a Parliamentary committee, as to 
the refusal of so many of the landowners to 
allow sites on their estates for the erection of 
Free churches. Self-blinded men ! forcing into 
public discussion that most delicate and com- 
bustible of questions, What are the inherent, 
indefeasible obligations to the commonwealth 
on which all landed property is held ? — a dis- 
cussion which only two classes would precipi- 
tate : the high patrician, from the stupidity of 
power : the low revolutionist, from the desire of 
a scramble. Sensible men of all classes would 
postpone it as long as possible. The hint of 

862 



HE DIES AT HIS POST. 363 

coming legislation brought the most obtuse of 
the site-refusers to their senses : existing cases 
were mostly compounded ; and I believe few 
bad cases now occur. 

Chalmers remained in London over a week. 

In his cross - examination by Sir James 
Graham, he was pressed, much against his will, 
into sketching out a platform on which the Free 
Churchmen might be justified in re-entering the 
Establishment He held the subject to be too 
remote for any serious consideration ; yet sug- 
gested, if the Legislature would guarantee the 
spiritual independence of the Church, — amongst 
other rights, that of withholding ordination from 
an unsuitable presentee, the temporalities to be 
conditional on ordination, that is, in fact, the 
abolition of patronage, — the Free Church might 
feel at liberty again to accept establishment, 
and would deal leniently with the residuary 
clergy, who had fomented the late confusions, 
and caused the Disruption. This was ridiculed 
at the time as one of his usual reveries. About 
two years ago, Mr. Gladstone made in substance 
the same answer to a deputation of the Estab- 
lished Church, agitating for the abolition of 



j£l THOMAS 



pofiraoagc : — * I think it would be said by those 
who went oat t hrough the struggle twenty-six 
years ago, that the ecclesiastical property should 
be made over to those who bore earlier testimony 
to the same principle; namely, the Free Church 
in 1845, and the various Seceding bodies now 
forming the United Presbyterian Church. 9 The 
suggestions are in principle identical. But that 
which was utopianism in Chalmers, is practical 
statesmanship in Gladstone. Such are the judg- 
ments of the world ! 

Although, from the events of the Disruption, 
he was less courted than he used to be in 
London by mere political notables and English 
dignitaries, who ran under his shield in 1838 
from the spears of the Voluntaries ; yet he re- 
ceived most honourable attention from men of 
the first distinction, as Lord John Russell (who 
was then Premier) and Lord Morpeth ; and he 
showed an unusual delight — I know it was very 
much remarked at the time — in holding inter- 
course with scientific and literary men. Amongst 
others are mentioned, Dr. Whewell, Dr. Buck* 
land, Isaac Taylor, Morell, Carlyle. The inter- 
view with Carlyle was peculiarly memorable. ' I 



HE DIES AT HIS POST. 365 

had lost all recollection of him/ writes Chal- 
mers, 'though he told me of three interviews, 
and having breakfasted with me at Glasgow. 
A strong-featured man, and of strong sense. 
We were most cordial and coalescing, and he 
very complimentary and pleasant ; but his talk 
was not at all Carlylish ; much rather the plain 
and manly conversation of good ordinary com- 
mon sense, with a deal of hearty laughing on 
both sides.' On one topic Chalmers spoke with 
deep concern, — it seems at this time to have 
been weighing heavily on his mind, — the 
estrangement existing between the Churches 
and the body of literary and scientific men. 
He mourned over this as a calamity to both, 
and a dead-weight on the harmonious progress 
of the world. Was there no common ground 
possible on which they might again meet, and 
harmonize and co-operate? He was also full 
of his ' City of God ' in the West Port ; of the 
charm and fruitfulness there is in localism ; that 
even a large and dense and utterly heathenish 
town may soon, by means of localism, be 
broken into clusters as of little country villages, 
opened out to the breath of all spiritual and 



366 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

civilising influences. He was bright and hope- 
ful and bounding as a boy. Carlyle remarked 
to a visitor soon afterwards, ' What a wonderful 
old man Chalmers is ! or, rather, he has all the 
buoyancy of youth. When so many of us are 
wringing our hands in helpless despair over the 
vileness and wretchedness of the large towns, 
there goes the old man, shovel in hand, down 
into the dirtiest puddles of the West Port of 
Edinburgh, cleans them out, and fills the sewers 
with living waters. It's a beautiful sight ! ' 

During this visit, Lord John Russell, as we 
have mentioned, was Premier, and Mr. Fox 
Maule, now Earl of Dalhousie, was a member 
of the Government Mr. Maule took the op- 
portunity to confer with Chalmers anxiously as 
to the possible basis for some scheme of com- 
prehensive National Education, which was felt 
then, as now, to be a matter of critical necessity ; 
but on which, then, as now, it seemed hopeless 
to bring the leading men and leading sections 
of the community to terms of agreement Dis- 
cussion has been useful — has nearly exhausted 
information and suggestion; but the time for 
action has arrived, if our common population 



HE DIES AT HIS POST. 367 

are to bfe brought up to the fair average of 
European intelligence, and saved from a deeper 
and deeper descent into brutality and barbarism. 
The initiative must now be taken by a strong, 
brave, virtuous Government, deciding on the 
broadest public grounds, cutting the Gordian 
knot, taking the whole responsibility, trusting to 
the good sense of the general community, and 
setting at defiance all sectional oppositions. 
This is a case where the voice of Britain, tired 
of all tinkering, demands a dictator to provide 
that no detriment happen to the commonwealth. 
Chalmers, one of the earliest and most active 
and ardent friends of universal popular educa- 
tion, — his whole political economy hinges upon 
education, — had for many years been revolving 
the question in his mind, especially when all 
those contentions were raging which form what 
is called the religious difficulty. Twenty years 
before (about 1828), he had taken a prominent 
part as to the Irish system ; and he then in- 
sisted, as I understand him, that the Bible at 
least should be a daily class-book in the na- 
tional schools ; but that none of the children 
should be compelled to attend, or be excluded 



368 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

from the other classes, if their parents objected to 
their being present at the reading of the Bible, 
that is, of the Protestant version. The difficul- 
ties as to the introduction of any religous book 
or catechism into national schools, when the 
nation is so much divided on religion, swelled 
and swelled every year, till they appeared al- 
most insurmountable ; and amid the din of sects, 
the educationists pure and simple were almost 
reduced to despair of ever seeing any national 
system at all. Chalmers had to undergo a 
struggle the most agonizing, between his own 
personal feeling of religion, his own ineffable 
love for the Bible, and his patriotic desire to see 
a more extended and a more deep-flowing edu- 
cation amongst the whole masses of the people. 
It is no exaggeration to call his struggle agoniz- 
ing, for I am assured that, about this very time 
(1847), he was a prey to the most cruel doubts 
and perplexities, and would burst forth into 
exclamations of distress: 'Is it not a terrible 
thing to have the Bible kicked in this way out 
of the schools ? ' But after gathering all infor- 
mation, and weighing every aspect of the ques- 
tion, he came to the conclusion, generally, that 



HE DIES AT HIS POST. 369 

the element of religion, most precious as it is, 
must not stand in the way of common national 
education ; that rather than this, it were better 
to leave religion to its natural guardians under 
God — parents, friends, ministers, and apply the 
national funds solely to the secular branches. 
The Government could only provide for the 
ordinary education. The Christian sects them- 
selves were to blame, who, in their thousand 
hopeless splits, could not agree upon any com- 
mon basis of Christianity, — not the Government, 
which tiiust legislate for the whole community, 
and could not subserve or truckle to particular 
sects and parties. This I infer to have been 
his final conclusion. It is thus that I read his 
last solemn testimony addressed to Fox Maule 
about a week before his death. 

*It were the best state of things, that we 
had a Parliament sufficiently theological to 
discriminate between the right and the wrong 
in religion, and to encourage or endow ac- 
cordingly. 

' But failing this, it seems to us the next best 
thing, that in any public measure for helping 
on the education of the people, Government 

2 A 



370 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

were to abstain front introducing the element 
of religion at all into their part of the schetne, 
. . . leaving this matter entire to the parties 
who had to do with the erection and manage- 
ment of the schools which they had been 
called upon to assist A grant by the State 
upon this footing might be regarded as being 
appropriately and exclusively the expression of 
their value for a good secular education. 

* The confinement for the time being of any 
Government measure for schools to this object 
we hold to be an imputation, not so much 
on the present state of our Legislature, as on 
the present state of the Christian world, now 
broken up into sects and parties innumerable, 
and seemingly incapable of any effort for so 
healing these wretched divisions as to present 
the rulers of our country with aught like such 
a clear and unequivocal majority in favour of 
what is good and true, as might at once deter- 
mine them to fix upon and espouse it . . . 

'As there seems no reason why, because of 
these unresolved differences, a public measure 
for the health of all, for the recreation of 
all, for the economic advancement of all, should 



HE DIES A T HIS POST. 371 

be held in abeyance ; there seems as little 
reason why, because of these differences, a public 
measure for raising the general intelligence of 
all should be held in abeyance! 

These were his last words to his country- 
men, a week before his death, on the subject 
of National Education. 

From London he paid a visit to Oxford 
with Dr. Buckland, where he roams delighted 
through the halls and colleges, and attends the 
Doctor's lecture on geology. But chief, he 
makes for his sister Jane's, in Gloucestershire, 
— his housekeeper in the early Kilmany days, 
and his cherished correspondent through life. 
Makes various side excursions — to see Robert 
Hall's widow, John Foster's daughters. A 
week of delicious and sanctified repose : sweet 
memories of the past, outpourings of the 
heart in the present, blessed assurances for the 
future, blending together as the soft colours of 
the rainbow. ' May one and all of us/ he 
would pray, when they were gathered together 
round the family altar, — 'May one and all of 
us be shielded under the canopy of the Re- 
deemer's righteousness ; that every hour that 



3/2 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

strikes, every day that dawns, every night that 
darkens around us, may find us meeter for 
death, and for the eternity that follows/ 

On Friday, 28th, he returns to Edinburgh, 
'bearing/ says his Biographer, 'no peculiar 
marks of fatigue or exhaustion/ Saturday — 
works at a report for Monday's General As- 
sembly. On Sabbath — repairs to his stated 
church ; converses much and cheerfully and 
piously with the friends around him ; some- 
times walks alone in the garden, where one 
of the family overhears him breathing out his 
spirit : ' O Father, my heavenly Father ! * 
Peace, lovingness, calm cloudless intellect, the 
quiet composed appearance of a hale old age, 
the infelt enjoyment of all high truths, with 
no intervening doubt, no distracting contro- 
versy, a full final realized sense of the Divine, 
— such were the characteristics of these few 
days. 

After prayers on the Sabbath he retired to 
his room, waving his hand cordially with his 
usual adieu — ' a general good-night !' 

Early on Monday morning a message came 
for some papers ; but as he had not been heard 



HE DIES AT HIS POST. 373 

moving, the old servant would not disturb him. 
A second message. ' She then entered the 
room/ says his Biographer, whose sublime de- 
scription cannot be touched even to a word, — 
' She then entered the room : it was in darkness. 
She spoke, but there was no response. At last 
she threw open the window-shutters, and drew 
aside the curtains of the bed. He sat there half 
erect, his head reclining gently on the pillow, 
the expression of his countenance that of fixed 
and majestic repose. She took his hand ; 
touched his brow. He had been dead for 
hours. Very shortly after that parting salute 
to his family, he had entered the eternal world. 
It must have been wholly without pain or con- 
flict The expression of the face undisturbed 
by a single trace of suffering ; the position of 
the body, so easy that the least struggle would 
have disturbed it; the very posture of arms 
and hands and fingers, known to his family as 
that into which they fell naturally in the mo- 
ment of entire repose, — conspired to show that, 
saved all strife with the last enemy, his spirit 
had passed to its place o£ blessedness and glory 
in the heavens/ 



374 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Could there be a finer illustration of the 
lesson of the Psalmist : • Mark the perfect man, 
and behold the upright : for the end of that 
man is peace?' Could a death more peaceful 
close a human life that was more upright and 
perfect ? At the death of any man of remark- 
able genius, how often have we to express grief 
and disappointment ! Either we have to say — 
* Alas ! he has died before his time — before he 
had come to the maturity of his powers.' Or — 
' He has never been appreciated ; his heart has 
been chilled by penury, or misunderstanding, or 
neglect Like Bacon, he may leave his name 
and memory to posterity/ Or — ' He has left a 
mangled reputation : indolence stopped the cur- 
rent of his soul, and unruly passions stamped 
his forehead with the brand of shame/ How 
altogether different with Chalmers ! Like Paul, 
he had finished his course ; and death came, not 
as a spoiler, but as the husbandman who bears 
home the sheaves nodding with ripeness. His 
powers had long settled into rich-laden maturity: 
longer time might only have shaken out some 
of the grains. The world always appreciated 
and loved him ; he was one of her favourite 



HE DIES AT HIS POST. 375 

children. His character and reputation had no 
taint ; he had an activity that brought forth the 
whole power that was in him ; and his only pas- 
sions were of the generous sort — that exalt, and 
do not detract from a man's fame. His whole 
nature was ennobled by the nobleness of the 
work in which he was constantly engaged. In 
short, he had great powers, and greatly used 
them ; great opportunities, and was always equal 
to them. His life was not longer than his use- 
fulness. There was no feeble falling-off He 
died in harness — at his post. 



XXVII. 



IN MEMORIAM. 




ARRY him forth, then, ye people of 
Scotland! carry forth your spiritual 
king, and give him a burial befitting 
his nobleness and a people's grief. Like other 
kings, even the best, he has had his seasons of 
partial eclipse, when, amidst the still general 
loyalty, there would be mutterings of discon- 
tent, signs of revolt ; but these interruptions 
have been slight and passing; for thirty years 
and more he has reigned with beneficent sway 
over the hearts and souls of the people. All 
have been moved by the might of his words ; 
all have been affected by the purity and 
grandeur of his aims — the constancy and ever- 
youthful ardour with which he has laboured 
for their fulfilment The serenity and sun-like 

876 



IN MEMORIAM. 377 

warmth and influence of his later years have 
banished any former clouds from the sky ; and 
that sudden solemn death — that passage of a 
moment, without sickness, without pain, with- 
out struggle, in the silence of night, in the deep 
sleep of peace, into that rest which remaineth 
for the good and faithful servants of their Lord , 
— hath thrown around the whole memory of 
him a radiance as from heaven. Carry him 
forth to burial, loyally and lovingly. 

It was the 4th of June, in the prime of 
summer ; but Nature disrobed herself of her 
gaiety and refulgence. The day was gloomy, 
shading the landscape in a sombre-grey ; heavy 
shapeless volumes of mist rolled over the 
heights, and sank down, impenetrable and cheer- 
less, upon the horizon ; whilst a keen east wind 
whistled drearily along the streets, and over the 
neighbouring fields and meadows. Those who 
know Edinburgh will remember the undulating 
ground immediately to the south, rising to a 
long flat ridge, formerly part of the old 
Borough Moor or common, which, three hun- 
dred years ago, as described by Drummond 
of Hawthornden, was a 'field, spacious and 



378 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

delightful by the shade of many stately and 
aged oaks.' These spacious and delightful 
glades are all now opened, cut up, and built 
upon, though many stately and aged trees 
have been left. The old common passes under 
various names — Morningside and Merchiston 
on the west, Bruntsfield in the middle, and 
Grange to the east Some years before his 
death, Chalmers had built for himself a com- 
modious but modest mansion at the west or 
Morningside end of this ridge ; and now he 
was to be buried in the Grange Cemetery, a 
mile to the east, which had lately been formed 
out of some pleasant pasture-fields, encircled 
by little belts of wood. 

The Free Assembly, which was convened at 
the time, suspended its sittings for business, and 
spent the morning in the exercises of devotion. 
So, in various churches of the town, did the 
ministers, not members of the Assembly, the 
deputations from England, and Ireland, and 
foreign countries, and the students and proba- 
tioners of the Free Church, — all of these meet- 
ings joined by large numbers of the inhabitants. 
Before one o'clock a dense body of the principal 



-i 



TN MEM0R1AM. 379 

citizens gathered on the south side of Charlotte 
Square, at the west end of the town ; and the 
Magistrates, arrayed in their scarlet robes and 
full insignia of office, to render every meed of 
human honour, waited in St George's Church in 
the same square. At one o'clock, the Assembly 
came forth from their hall in George Street, 
all in gowns and bands, preceded by their 
officers with white rods in their hands ; they 
were followed by the professors of the Free 
College, the ministers and elders not members of 
the Assembly, the ministers of other denomina- 
tions, the students and probationers, with cer- 
tain officers interspersed, bearing black rods; 
next came the rector and masters of the High 
School in their gowns, preceded by their janitor, 
and the rector and students of the Normal 
School, with a number of other teachers of the 
neighbourhood. A pause of a few minutes 
was made in the wide Lothian Road, the way 
to Morningside, when the Magistrates came up 
and took their place in front, and the mighty 
array of citizens closed up the rear. The pave- 
ment on both sides was a moving mass of 
population, men and women and children. 



380 THOMAS CHALMERS. 



Doorways and windows, and all accessible 
standing - places, were filled with spectators. 
The procession, four abreast, now moved up 
Lothian Road, and at the head of it, made a 
bend towards the West Port, where Chalmers 
had raised up his last City of God. At the 
Main Point, as it is called, the entrance into the 
West Port, stood clustered the committee and 
congregation of the West Port, representing 
that outcast population, which had been the 
objects of his latest labours and prayers, sym- 
bolizing that which had been the ideal of his 
life — the social and spiritual redemption of the 
neglected millions. In sorrow and orphanhood 
they fell in at the rear of the procession ; which 
again wended its way by the Links of Brunts- 
field, over the summit at Morningside, then 
halted near the house of a nation's mourning. 
The hearse was now brought forth, with the 
four horses and attendant grooms, amid general 
manifestations of the most profound emotion. 
Two interesting groups here joined the proces- 
sion — the office-bearers and congregation of the 
Morningside Church, of which he had himself 
been a member, and the pupils from Merchiston 



IN MEM0R1AM. 381 

' — ^ 

m 

Castle, the seat anciently of the famous John 
Napier, inventor of the logarithms, but which 
has been for some generations one of the most 
celebrated academies in Scotland. The proces- 
sion, completed by the last sad memorial, began 
its funeral march. ' All the neighbouring roads/ 
says an account, which must either have been 
drawn up or revised by the eloquent pen of 
Hugh Miller, — 'all the neighbouring roads, 
with the various streets through which the pro- 
cession passed, from Morningside on to Lau- 
riston, and from Lauriston to the burying- 
ground, a distance, by this circuitous route, of 
considerably more than two miles, were lined 
thick with people. We are confident we rather 
under-estimate than exaggerate their numbers 
when we state, that the spectators of the funeral 
must have rather exceeded than fallen short of 
a hundred thousand persons. As the procession 
approached, the shops on both sides, with scarce 
any exception^, were shut up, and business sus- 
pended. There was no part of the street or 
road through which it passed sufficiently open, 
or nearly so, to give a view of the whole. The 
spectator merely saw file after file pass by in 



382 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

what seemed endless succession. 9 Many thou- 
sands had already repaired to the extensive 
Cemetery. Through the middle of it, for the 
whole width, runs a series of vaults, faced with 
Gothic screens, and surmounted by a pathway 
or terrace, raised about twenty feet above the 
level : tliere chiefly had the crowd stationed 
themselves, composed in large proportion of 
women, who evinced the deepest interest and 
sympathy. And now, by the eastern gate enter 
the hearse and the dark-plumed horses; then 
wave after wave, and reach after reach, of that 
far-stretching procession. Hundreds pour in, 
and hundreds follow, but the rolling tide seems 
endless. ' The appearance/ says the eye-witness, 
' was that of an army' At last the vast space is 
filled — black with the badges of mourning, re- 
lieved, however, by the scarlet robes of the 
magistracy near the grave, and the varied 
colours worn by many of the women on the 
elevated terrace. The day continued as it be- 
gan — sombre-grey, obscure, and bleak. From 
that plateau-ground of the Grange, whence so 
many charming views may be obtained on a 
clear day, almost none of the surrounding 



IN MEMORTAM. 383 

scenes were visible. The beetling Castle rock, 
the crown-shaped spire of St. Giles, the ' lion's 
head' of Arthur's Seat, only peeped out now 
and then through the rack of the clouds ; the 
leafy woods around were thickly draped in 
mist ; the rough hills of Braid, the bold sum- 
mits of the Pentlands, were obliterated in the 
dense gloom ; the east wind was moaning 
through the flowers and the trees. All the 
immense multitude had now settled, and was 
still and pensive. Eye and ear, all the senses 
and feelings, deprived of outward prospect, were 
concentered upon the one spot. All could yet 
see before them that ever-memorable form — 
could hear again that piercing and irresistible 
voice. The very youths of Merchiston could 
still see him, as he used to pass every day near 
their gate — the great head, the eye all reverie, 
the look so abstracted yet so bland — the won- 
drous staff in his hand, brought down at regular 
intervals on the ground, by which, amid all his 
thoughts and conversations, he could always 
mentally number the paces he had walked. 
Every one there had his reminiscences, his 
tender associations, his thousand chords of love 



384 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and admiration. But the coffin is drawn forth 
from the hearse ; it is lowered into the grave ; 
it is steadied, settled at the bottom. The 
awful pause of last separation — the feeling 
that the bourne is now passed whence no tra- 
veller returns or replies — then the dread silence 
harshly disturbed — the dropping of the clay 
— the rattle of the first stone upon the lid. 
. . . Ah ! . . . No service, no ceremony, 
no gently whispering words of comfort or 
hope break, in Scotland, the concentration of 
the sorrow — no relief, no relief, save in tears. 
'It was the dust/ — in the concluding words 
of Hugh Miller, — 'it was the dust of a Pres- 
byterian minister which the coffin contained ; 
and yet they were burying him amid the 
tears of a nation, and with more than kingly 
honours. . . . Never before did we witness 
such a funeral ; nay, never before, in at least 
the memory of man, did Scotland witness such 
a funeral' 



Surely we have been contemplating a very 
remarkable and a very noble life, ending with 



IN MEMORIAM. 385 

a death universally mourned. We have only 
seen this life in passing glimpses, not as it may 
be seen in his extended Biography ; and even 
his Biography, full and diversified as it is, falls 
immeasurably short of the actual impression 
which he made on his own generation of living 
men. There is a grand something always lost 
even in the best biographies, as in the casts that 
are taken after death : the warm current of life 
has stopped, the soul has waned away from the 
countenance. The life even the best told, is not 
the life as it was lived. We have only there- 
fore been looking, not at the real Chalmers, but 
at a pale reflection from a larger portrait, care- 
fully executed, yet far short of the living and 
moving original. Still, with only this faint 
image before us, do we not feel that we have 
been in the presence of a Master-Mind ? one of 
those who not only 'fill well the part which has 
been assigned to them in the drama of life, but 
who leave the impression that they were cap- 
able of far greater things — that they had been 
limited in their sphere, not in their powers of 
action ? 

We always reverence a man the more ear- 

2B 



386 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

nestly, and place him higher on the pedestal of 
fame, the more that his life has been dedicated 
to the welfare of his fellow-men, and the less he 
has been absorbed in mere bustle and anxiety 
for his own aggrandisement, his own pre-emi- 
nence or pleasure. Chalmers lived and laboured 
almost entirely for his species, not for himself ; 
and not in a vain, hazy, cosmopolitan way for 
mankind in general, but for the men, women, 
and children that lay close around him — for his 
parishioners, his townsfolk, his countrymen, and 
then, in ever-widening circles, as far as in his 
power, for the whole world, wherever ignorance 
and vice and misery were to be found. Nothing 
human was alien from him ; but it was to the 
humanity that lay nearest to him that he first 
performed his duties. 

He did almost nothing for his own personal 
interest He made use of his high and extensive 
social connection to promote the public causes 
which he had at heart ; but he never seems to 
have made an ounce of personal capital all his 
life out of all the grand folks whom he knew, 
and who would have been proud to do him a 
service. He was too busy, too preoccupied in 



IN MEMORIAM. 387 



his own sphere of duty, to have much time or 
inclination for general society ; and it is one of 
the curious traits in his character, that, under 
great outward frankness and cordiality, he had 
much reserve, much reticence, much solitariness 
in his nature. We have already quoted some 
strange sayings of his as to his sense of loneli- 
ness in the world. ' I am conversant more with 
principles than with persons. I begin to sus- 
pect that the intensity of my own pursuits has 
isolated me from living men. ... I have a great 
and growing sense of desolation.' One who 
was in the most intimate relations with him for 
many long years, once observed to me : ' He 
was a most secretive man, Chalmers, and kept 
his mind rigidly to himself. You might live 
with him for years, and not know his real sen- 
timents as to the men of the day and passing 
events, even those in which he was concerned 
and engaged. When he had a duty to speak 
out, he spoke out, as every one knows, without 
any uncertain sound, and quite fearless of 
persons ; but otherwise he was very close, and 
staved off conversation with general answers. 
I do not know that latterly he had a friend in 



388 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the highest sense,— one to whom he would freely 
and unrestrainedly unbosom himself.' This is 
quite in keeping with his laments over his deso- 
lation ; and explains also the avidity with which 
he flew to the relief of solitary meditation, and 
held such unrestrained, such all-confessing, all- 
supplicating communion with his God He 
had entered thoroughly into the situation and 
feeling so pathetically expressed in the Psalm : 
'As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
so panteth my soul after Thee, O God! My 
soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: 
when shall I come and appear before God ? 
. , . Why art thou cast down, O my soul ? and 
why art thou disquieted within me? hope in 
God ; for f shall yet praise Him, who is the 
health of my countenance, and my God.' 

I believe — indeed he over and over again 
confesses, and in his later years, as was his wont, 
he laments — that he had a keen desire for fame 
as an author ; that he had an ambition to take 
his place on the roll of British literature ; and 
that he felt a real gratification in the popularity 
which many of his writings attained, and in the 
universal reputation in which he was held as a 



IN MEMORIAM. 389 

man of genius and eloquence. But if we are 
to judge from his own private diaries and letters 
now made public, he did not hang with any 
peculiar fondness of pleasure over his literary 
successes. He often notices the publication of 
a work, but without one spark of self-laudation, 
without the least anxiety about its reception ; 
and he seldom recurs to it afterwards, or evinces 
in any other way the touchiness of ,the irritabile 
genus. I think, also, the thirst for applause as 
an author died very much out of him. As his 
heart became more and more set upon the 
realization of his great ideals, he cared less for 
the charms of literature, and used his pen less 
to gain renown than to gain attention to the 
particular schemes of beneficence in which he 
was engaged. He was less anxious whether his 
books were admired : more anxious to ascer- 
tain whether they were working conviction and 
bringing subscriptions. They became rather his 
manifestoes as a man of action, than his well- 
matured productions as a man of literature. 

Any one who has gone over the whole of his 
writings, as I have done, from first to last, though 
many of them at a period now distant, must 



390 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

have felt what an immense extent of subjects he 
had grappled with in his time, and how careful 
and conscientious had been his study. He was 
an accomplished mathematician, up even to the 
higher branches ; he was an astronomer, not 
upon testimony, but from having verified the 
calculations for himself; he was an experimental 
chemist ; a botanist, not from the books of men, 
but from the book of nature; and there were 
few other sciences with which he had not some- 
thing of a real and technical acquaintance. Of 
literature and history he had made no exact or 
comprehensive study; but he had thoroughly 
realized to himself the British and French philo- 
sophy, metaphysical and ethical, from Locke, 
through Hume, Reid, Butler and Paley, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, the Encyclopedists, down to his con- 
temporary Thomas Brown. He was perfect 
master of the everlasting ' Yes and No/ so far 
as it had been tossed backward and forward 
during that period ; but beyond these dates and 
limits he had never effectively penetrated. Of 
all departments of science, however, the modern 
creation of Political Economy had been his 
principal and engrossing study, — not as an 



IN MEM0R1AM. 391 

amusement, not as a dilettanteism, not even as a 
manly exercise of the mind, but as a business of 
his life, as a solemn part of his duty, as an 
oracle from which he would best learn how to 
advise, how to befriend, how to lay and conduct 
his plans for the good of the poor and the 
working class. His discussions on all this wide 
range of subjects may be too diffuse ; he may 
waste too much time over preliminaries and 
side-points ; his tone may be too eager, his view 
too one-sided ; but he is never shallow, never 
trite ; he always hits at last upon that which is 
the decisive point, shows that he understands 
it, and fights round it with untiring industry, 
amazing force, and a never-exhausted richness 
of illustration. Still, while according a full tri- 
bute to his knowledge, talent, solidity, and 
variety of attainments, I admit he is no philo- 
sophical discoverer, no originator of a school, 
or even of a new doctrine; his merit always 
comes round to that which was so happily ex- 
pressed by Stuart Mill — his habit of studying 
all phenomena and all subjects * at first hand* 
He has this precious originality, that every 
thought which he utters has been tested and 



392 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

made his own, though the germ of it may have 
been planted and nourished by his forerunners. 

His powers of speculative thought may not 
have been high enough to place him in the 
ranks of the leaders in philosophy, but they 
were large enough, and fresh and deep enough, 
to communicate a superior wisdom, efficacy, and 
stability to his measures as a man of action. 
His habits of philosophical thought — of gene- 
ralizing upon the nature and motives and affec- 
tions of man, and upon the effects of various 
social arrangements — aided him greatly in de- 
vising and shaping his plans, and in working 
them out in a way that should harmonize with 
the whole machine of society, and be permanent 
and self-continuing ; not transitory, and depend- 
ing upon chances and caprices. His constant 
aim was, to take advantage of some obvious 
human principle, place it under good working 
conditions, give to it the first mighty shove, 
then trust to its becoming habitual, necessary, 
almost mechanical, as if under a law of nature. 
The nation in which he wrought might be small; 
the scene of his operations might be somewhat 
hidden from the European eye ; but a fair and 



IN MEMORIAM. 393 

genial examination of his acts will convince 
every spirit, that has the slightest touch of a 
nobleness like his own, that in simplicity and 
• boldness of conception, in fertility of resources, 
in elevation of character, in prudence of man- 
agement, in skill and unyielding firmness of 
execution, he is entitled to his place amongst 
that high order of men, who have been the 
founders of society, who have given the initia- 
tive to legislation, to government, to institutions, 
to great social movements. He was of the stuff 
of which the Pyms and the Colberts were made, 
the Franklins and Cavours, the Knoxes, the 
Wesleys, the St Vincent de Pauls, — the men 
who have the gift to meet emergencies with the 
proper remedies ; to bridle revolution by the re- 
straining influences of a new order ; to make of 
benevolence a work, not a sentiment ; to conso- 
lidate and perpetuate the forces of enthusiasm 
in the moulds of powerful organization. These 
chiefs of society differ from each other in the 
importance of their deeds, the largeness of their 
sphere, the dignity of their position, even as one 
star differeth from another star in glory ; but 
we mark not with critical eye the differing 



394 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

lustre of their crowns — which are brighter, which 
are dimmer. We look up to them with simple 
reverence, as one shining band in the temple of 
Fame, — the movers of the world, — who, in the 
time of darkness, have shed upon it a guiding 
light ; in the time of stagnation have stirred up 
its waters into healthful play; in the time of 
confusion and destruction have tamed its vio- 
lence with great conquering ideas, and created 
new forms of life to accommodate the new wants 
and aspirations of mankind. 




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